


I Was Not Born For Death

by shiniestqueen (sparrowinsky)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Child Soldiers, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 20:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 26,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5178713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowinsky/pseuds/shiniestqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After bringing about the second fall of Hydra and the destruction of SHIELD, Steve desperately chases what remains of his best friend, while trying to find out exactly who the woman he's working with really is:</p><p>Romanova, Natalia Alianova. Born 1984. One of 28 Black Widow agents with the Red Room.</p><p>Except none of that is true. This isn't the first time Steve has met the woman he knows as Natasha Romanoff. Looking for Bucky -- the man they both loved in 1944 -- forces Natasha to face her own past, secrets she thought she'd left behind, and secrets she thought she'd destroyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beautiful art was created for this fic by my Romanoff Big Bang artist, jnjlen-ou-skinjbir: [here](http://jnjlen-ou-skinjbir.tumblr.com/post/132875250816/another-art-for-the-romanoff-big-bang-this-time). (IT IS SO PRETTY.)
> 
> Eternal and overflowing gratitude to my beta, [atsadi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Atsadi/pseuds/Atsadi), who held my hand through the hard parts and chivvied me through my multiple temper tantrums about writing; and to [ozhawk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/pseuds/ozhawk) who nudged me through more than a few stuck spots. This fic would not exist without these awesome people!
> 
> _“I was not born for death and yet I have died a thousand times, he thought. And now I am born again for these hard times.”_   
>  **― Kathryn Lasky, Frost Wolf**

“Could you try to look more like a soldier, Rogers?” 

Natasha hip-checks Steve as she trots up the creaky steps behind him and reaches past him to slide the key-card through the reader. Steve grimaces and shifts, rolling his shoulders back as the door beeps cheerfully.

“No, that’s worse. Relax.” Natasha slips in ahead of him, leaving the lights off. She snakes around the room, curling her fingers under sills and behind the television, any place unwanted technology might hide. She doesn’t have to look back to know that he’s assessing the exits and planning contingencies. 

She’s glancing into the tiny bathroom when she hears his groan, an exasperated rumble that brings a smile twitching to her lips.

“I see you found the bed,” she says, raising her voice as she steps into the narrow bathroom and closes the door most of the way.

“Can we get another room?”

The bed — singular, king-sized — squeaks beneath him as he sits. Natasha checks through the bathroom rapidly before turning on the shower and gratefully peeling off her clothes. She’d had to throw a jacket over her shirt to hide a streak of blood, and now she allows herself a loud groan of pleasure as she strips the sweat-stiff garments off her body.

Steve’s strangled noise is just audible over the water, followed a muttered “… does that on purpose…”

Natasha sticks her head out the door and peers innocently at him. “Don’t worry, Rogers, I’m sure I’ll manage to keep my hands to myself. Your virtue is safe tonight.”

She ignores his sputtered response and ducks back into the shower. She turns the water up as hot as it goes, watching her skin flush pink beneath the spray as the accumulation of three days’ worth of sweat and dirt is rinsed into the drain.

Three days of almost nothing but driving and fighting, following a trail that could go cold tomorrow. Or next week. Or a month from now. A headache is throbbing behind her eyes, the lack of sleep beginning to take its toll.

Natasha sighs and drops to the floor of the cramped shower, wrapping her arms around her knees like a child.

“Natasha?”

Steve’s voice is muffled — he must have closed the door. Natasha runs her fingers through her soaking wet hair, grimacing. She hadn’t heard him do it.

“Natasha,” he repeats. There’s a dull thump, then a scrape, and a thump again, muffled in the carpet. Natasha can picture him with his legs in front of him, sprawled on the floor and leaning his head against the bathroom door. She chokes back a noise that might have been a laugh.

“Yes,” she says after a moment.

“The bunker. Zola called you ‘Romanov, Natalia Alianovna.’”

“Yeah.” She tips her head into the spray.  Don’t ask.

“ I knew someone, in the war… who told me that was a pretty uncommon name.”

“Mmmm.”

“Hmm,” he agrees. “Her name was Natalia Alianovna Romanova too. She was a spy, Russian. ‘Bout your height, strawberry blonde. They called her The Anastasia.”

“That’s interesting, Rogers. Is there a point?”

Natasha jumps involuntarily when something slams into the door. She can hear wood crack under the blow.

We’re gonna have to pay for that leaps to the tip of her tongue, but the flippancy will make him angrier. She stays silent instead, counting her breaths to even out her suddenly pounding heart.

“Stop lying to me.” His words are bit out in anger and followed by the faint thud of his boots on the thin carpet, and the slam of the motel room door. She listens to his heavy steps until she hears the crunch of asphalt beneath his feet. She gasps, then, pulling air in so deeply her lungs ache. She runs a hand through her water-tangled hair.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” she whispers, and closes her eyes, feeling the spray from above falling weakly all over her curled form.

It’s past midnight when Steve slips silently back into the room. Natasha is sitting in the bed, staring blankly at a black-and-white western on the TV. Steve pauses and takes a breath like he means to speak, before shaking his head and toeing off his boots. He sits gingerly on the other side of the bed, his broad back all she can see.

“Stark says the trail’s still good,” he says, voice low. Natasha breathes in the stale motel-room air and says nothing. Steve sighs. “Nat-”

“Erskine liked the idea of remaking things. Making them better.” Steve sucks in a sharp breath and Natasha switches the TV off. “Project Rebirth. He named you after me. The Anastasia, the reborn.”

Steve shifts, laying back on the bed, still fully dressed. The entire bed moves with his weight. Natasha listens to him breathe beneath the rustle of air conditioning. 

“Did you know it was Bucky,” he says, finally, and it’s not really a question, not with that Captain America note of certainty in his voice.

“I know a lot of things, Steve.”

“I thought you just acted like--”

“Yes,” she says, to make him stop. “I do. I know a lot. And I wasn’t really born in 1984, although I’m glad that bit of editing held up.”

“You know you’re going to have to explain, right?”

“Tomorrow,” she says, rolling over with a sigh. “Get some sleep, Steve.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Russia**

**1928**

 

“Did you build this house, little mouse?”

Natasha pauses with her hand hovering over the small pile of sticks assembled before her. She looks up, very far up; a man in a soldier’s coat looks down at her. He is blocking out the blue sky. Her baby brother Vitya reaches for the man’s coat as she thinks, so she pulls him back and absently gives him a stick to chew. She looks down again at the little stick-house in the grass, which has taken the whole morning to build.

“Yes, we did,” she says, “but I am not a mouse. I am Natalya Yurievna.”

The man laughs softly. “Not a mouse, indeed. Hello, Natalya Yurievna. I am Ivan Petrovich.” He crouches and looks her in the eye. “Brave little thing. How old are you, Natalya?”

He smiles as he speaks, but it’s not a true smile. Natasha knows the difference. She has seen the way Papa’s eyes crinkle when he speaks, the way Mama’s smiles are sometimes too-smooth.

“Five,” she says, after a long moment. She glances towards the house, wondering if Papa will see the man through the front window and come out. Natasha has never met someone new before, and doesn’t quite know what to do.

“Five. A good age, five. And your brother, he is still a baby, I think.” Ivan reaches out and taps Vitya on the nose, making the boy giggle. “Let me ask you, Natalya—”

“Hello, who are you?” Natasha’s father emerges from the open door, wiping his hands against his pants as he descends steps. A cloud of wood-dust puffs away from the fabric with every motion.

Natasha sighs, relieved, until she looks up and sees the soldier’s face. His smile is gone and his eyes are hard for a moment before his face goes very smooth, and he stands and turns towards her father.

“Hello, friend.” The soldier walks towards him with heavy, even steps. “You have a lovely house, a lovely family. Let me speak to you for a moment.”

“Of course,” Papa replies. He looks at Natasha and jerks his head towards the house. “Your mama wants help, Natasha. Take your brother inside.”

He is lying. Natasha knows, because he is smiling with all his teeth, and Papa only does that when he lies. He says it’s why he always tells the truth. Still, she stands and brushes dirt from her skirts, then takes Vitya’s hand to pull him into the house.

The air inside is very still. Dust motes float in the sunlight in the front room along with the strong scent of pine wood. Small lengths of the pine lie atop the huge battered table that takes up most of the space. Natasha squeezes her brother’s hand tightly when he begins to fuss, and pulls him around the table into the darkened back room where their mother lies in bed.

“Stay,” she whispers into his ear, half-lifting him onto the bed. He obediently grabs hold of the quilted blanket and pulls himself up, shifting closer to their mother while watching Natasha with wide eyes, but he makes no move to follow her as she slips back out of the room. She leans against the doorway and quickly pulls off her boots, so that her feet make no noise when she darts back past the table to hide beneath the open window.

“-project that will carry our country into the future,” the soldier is saying. A burnt smell drifts in along with his voice, so strong that Natasha has to breathe through her sleeve to avoid sneezing.

“Ah, I see,” her father murmurs. “Amazing, truly. But I must ask again, what do you need here, with us?”

“It is a big thing, bigger than any person or family, and it will need soldiers. So, we are recruiting.”

“My son is a little young for the army, don’t you think?” Both men laugh, the sound harsh to Natasha’s ears. She frowns and bites her sleeve.

“Perhaps, though we want them young for this, trained up. Your daughter is the right age, and seems clever enough-”

Something bangs against the wall, and Ivan stops abruptly. Natasha bites harder at the rough fabric of her sleeve to keep from shrieking. Her heart thumps too quickly in her chest, and tears sting at her eyes.

“No, no. I know what soldiers want girls for,” her father snarls. “She’s a child! ‘Train them up,’ hah! Go away, scoundrel, don’t come back here again!”

There is a long moment of silence.

“Not for that, old man,” the soldier says. His voice is low, even, with an undercurrent of something that makes Natasha tremble. “For the state. For the scientists. It would be an honor for her to be chosen. She would honor her country.”

“No. No, you will not have her. I will kill you if you touch her. Go away from my house.”

The soldier laughs. “You are well-loved, little one,” he says, voice raised. “It is a good thing, to be loved.”

There is a muffled smacking sound, followed by the soldier’s heavy tread, moving away, moving back towards the road. Natasha waits until she can’t hear his footsteps before she runs out to her father.

“Papa,” she whispers.

He is half-facing the road, pale and breathing fast. He grips his left shoulder tightly with his other hand. “Did you come and listen, bad girl?”

“Yes, Papa,” she says.

“Ah,” he says, and leans back against the wall, sliding down its surface until he’s sitting on the ground. Natasha edges closer. She’s never seen her father like this: afraid. “Good girl. Good to know things. Natashen’ka, my love, come here.”

She climbs quickly into his lap, curling up small so she is entirely within the safety of his space. They watch the empty road together, until the sky turns velvet blue.

* * *

“Natasha.”

Natasha curls deeper into the blankets. She’s warm and sleepy and she doesn’t want to move.

“Wake up, little love.”

She slowly blinks her eyes open, then shivers and rolls over, all at once awake when she sees that Mama is crouched beside the low bed Natasha shares with Vitya, smoothing her hands over the blanket.

“Mama?”

“Shh, shh. Wake up. There’s a good girl.” Her mother’s eyes are wide and glittering in the moonlight. Natasha blinks at her mother, confused. She looks around the room. Her parents’ bed is empty.

“Papa?”

“Everything is all right, my love,” Mama says, which is not an answer and makes Natasha frown. She opens her mouth to ask again, but a piercing howl from outside cuts her off. Natasha whimpers, grabbing for her mother.

“Wolf,” she whispers, wide-eyed.

Mama peels her fingers away and pats her soothingly, the same motion she’d used on the bedcovers. “I don’t think—” she begins, frowning at the window. “Doesn’t matter. Natasha, nothing is wrong yet, but I am worried. Papa and I are going to bar the door and windows, and you watch your brother, yes?”

Natasha is familiar with Mama’s worries, but her father usually shushes them away. If Papa is worried too… she nods, hugging herself tightly.

“Good girl. Always such a good girl.” Mama leans forward and presses a kiss to Natasha’s tangled hair. “I think to myself sometimes, my daughter must be the very best one in the world.” And she smiles, very small, but very true, before she rises and turns away.

The howl comes again, closer, and Mama pauses in the doorway with her hands curled into fists, but then she’s gone. Natasha hears Papa’s voice in a low whisper, too quiet to make out the words, and her mother’s too as she responds.

She blinks around at the bedroom, unable to remember ever being awake this late. She likes the way the moonlight comes into the window; a beam of icy light that looks so solid that she wonders if she could trap it in something to look at later. The howl comes again, this time just outside the house, and sounding different than the moon-howling she hears in the distance sometimes. Vitya grumbles in his sleep. Natasha scrambles to hold him as fast as her short limbs will carry her, crushing the blanket around him in a tight hug.

“Shh, shh.”

She looks around the room again, trying to think of what to do. Mama had said to protect Vitya. That was her job. Her eyes land on the large chest at the end of her parents bed, then on Vitya’s curled little body. She pats the blankets around Vitya and slides to the floor.

Something bangs against the front door. Her parents are shouting but Natasha can’t tell what they’re saying. Her ears are roaring and she is frozen in place.

Then the noise comes again, sharp, echoing through the walls of the house, through her bones. She moves again to the large chest at the foot of her parents’ bed, heavy, dark, sweet-smelling wood. It’s almost as tall as she is, but she pushes hard against the lid and it opens, just a crack, before her arms give out and it drops back with a heavy thud. She runs back to the side of the bed, feet slipping on the floor and pulls the blanket off. It’s heavy but she drags it back with her and pushes the lid up again, just enough to shove the blanket into the crack. She pushes more blanket in as her heart pounds, slowly lifting the lid up with every shove.

“Vitya,” she hisses, not looking away from her task, but her brother grumbles and burrows deeper into his blanket. “Vitya!” She shoves one last time, takes her hands away slowly. The lid doesn’t fall.

The banging at the front of the house is loud and constant now. Natasha tries to ignore it, even though tears sting her eyes and her skin prickles . She pulls her brother and his blanket off the bed though he fights her, chubby fists pressing into her face and shoulders as he tries to push her away.

“Shh, Vitya, no!” She shakes him a little. “Wake up!” He blinks his eyes open, frowns at her, the face he makes before he cries. She blows in his face, sharp, like she has seen Mama do; he shakes his head in surprise, and she takes the reprieve to half-drag, half-carry him across to the chest. “In,” she says, lifting him as best she can. Habit takes over; Vitya is used to Natasha helping him onto the bed or table or the big rock in the garden. His little hands grab for the edge and he pulls as Natasha pushes him up, so that he lands with a soft thump within the chest, and she crawls in after as quickly as she can.

The chest smells like dust and old fabric, tickling at her nose, but she ignores it and starts pulling the blanket in with them as fast as she can. Beside her, Vitya hiccups softly, and she can tell a wail is building in him. “Shh, shh, no crying,” she whispers. With a final tug the blanket slides in and the lid falls closed, covering them in darkness.

She reaches for her brother, pulling him close and rocking as best she can in the small space. The thick wood of the chest muffles the sounds from outside, but she tries to listen anyway. The bangs and crashes begin to blur together, pierced twice by a louder, sharper sound. The howls are gone. Maybe Papa killed the wolves, she thinks, but the thought of climbing out to check tightens around her throat and chokes her. She waits instead, rocking Vitya back to sleep. Eventually the sick, rushing feeling of panic fades, and Natasha finds herself leaning back against the blanket and drifting away.

She wakes again when the lid creaks open, squinting against the bright sunlight that chases away the darkness.

“Papa?”

“No, little mouse.”

Her arms tighten around her brother. “Where is my Papa?”

The soldier sighs, pushing the lid of the chest fully open. “Not here, mouse. You need to come with me, now.”

Natasha looks up at him. “Papa told you go away.”

“He did. I heard the howling, and came back.” He reaches into the chest and lifts Vitya away from her. Her brother doesn’t even wake, nestles easily into the man’s shoulder. “Natalya Yurievna… I am sorry. I was too late, little mouse.”

She blinks at him silently.

“Your parents… the wolves… your parents are gone, Natasha.”

“No,” she says, because he is wrong. “Papa wouldn’t leave.”

The soldier runs his free hand through his hair, a small groan escaping him. “To heaven, little mouse. Your parents are dead, I’m sorry.” Without giving her time to respond, he reaches down again and scoops Natasha up against his other shoulder. She doesn’t bother to struggle, her limbs suddenly too heavy to move. “Press your face into my shoulder, and close your eyes, there’s a good girl. You look again when I tell you to and not before, yes? Good.”

He moves quickly, turning and carrying the two of them through the house. As he steps out into the yard, Natasha’s eyes flutter open. Apology leaps to the tip of her tongue, but trails away as she sees Mama and Papa lying on the floor.

No wolves, just her parents.

No bites, just two big marks of red on their stomachs.

She shivers and squeezes her eyes tightly shut again.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha wakes up before Steve and hotwires the fanciest car she can find, which in this tiny desert town is a ten-year-old station wagon. The air conditioning works, though, and it’s got a full tank of gas, and that’s all she really cares about. She checks her phone while he pays the motel bill.

(She ignores three inane texts from Tony and responds to a fourth, begging to see her Widow’s Bites yet again, tapping out, as always,  only if you make me better ones  and a winking face, before she sends Clint a photo of the car. He responds immediately with a picture of his mock-horrified face followed by  enjoy the drive, i'll be thinking of you while i remain in this fancy climate-controlled building .)

They get breakfast at a diner on the way out of town, huge plates of greasy food. Natasha can feel Steve’s eyes on her, noticing for the first time that she puts away nearly as much food as he does. He’s silent, though, until they’re thirty miles out and the Sierra Nevadas are a growing smudge on the horizon.

“Storytime, Romanoff.”

Nat glances at him with a tight smile. “Too much to hope you were gonna let it go?”

Steve sighs and slumps against the passenger door like somebody’s cut his strings. “I get that you probably don’t want to tell me, and believe me, I’m kicking myself for not figuring it out— then, and now. But I’d like to know what’s going on. And if I… if maybe I didn’t lose everybody...”

“Oh,” she says lightly, “right in the heartstrings, Cap.”

“Nat.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and stretches, arching her back off the seat for a moment until her spine cracks pleasantly. “It’s nothing much to tell. Erskine came to Russia first, they recruited a group of girls, we went through training, they picked me. Simple.”

“Yeah? Then why’d he come over here and try it again?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Rogers.” She shrugs, turning up the AC. “It didn’t work out the way they planned. I wasn’t what they wanted.”

“The serum makes you better, though. I’ve seen you fight. Better is an understatement.”

“...thanks. But it doesn’t.”

“What?”

“Make you better. It just makes you more of what you really are.”

 

* * *

Steve’s cell breaks the silence with a soft  bzzt hours later as they climb the mountains, the stark desert giving away to pine trees with startling abruptness. Natasha glances at him from the corner of her eye but makes no comment as he pulls the phone out and narrows his eyes at the screen.

“Coordinates,” he mutters, straightening in his seat. “And this is the last one. If there’s any more safehouses left, Stark can’t find them.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” she says.

“I know.”

“He might not remember you.” Natasha rubs her hand along the steering wheel.

“Somebody pulled me out of the river, Nat.” Steve shifts again.

“My point is we don’t know how much of him  is Bucky, and how much is the Winter Soldier.”

Something changes in the air of the car, and Natasha can feel the fight that’s coming, down to her bones. Then Steve sighs, curling in on himself.

“I know.”

The coordinates lead them deep and high into the mountains, past resorts and faux-rustic cabins. Steve reads off directions until they reach a sharply angled dirt road, still smudged here and there with lingering, mud-grayed snow. 

“Ten miles out,” he says, indicating off-road, and she pulls the car over without a word. They exit the vehicle silently, checking weapons and gear. 

“Forest or road?” 

Natasha shrugs. “You don’t think he’ll see us coming either way?”

“I don’t know, would you?”

She gives him a look. “This can’t wait until we’re back at the tower, safe and sound?”

He glares. “‘Hey Rogers, you’re not the only super-soldier. In fact, you’re not even the first. And the other two are your brainwashed best friend and a woman who’s been working alongside you without a word about it for two years, who  also happens to be someone you knew in 1943 and didn’t tell you about it  then, either.’ You’re right. It’s not bothering me at all, it can wait.”

Natasha narrows her eyes at him and steps into the treeline. Steve mutters something too quietly even for her to hear, but he follows her up the curve of the road. She doesn’t go far into the trees; she’s not trying to hide, she just doesn’t want to face any lingering Hydra defenses head-on. Ten minutes later, they sight a cabin nestled against sharp rise in the mountain. Natasha slows, stepping to the side. Steve’s next step carries him level with her and he gives her lopsided smile that screams  forgive me ?

Natasha ignores it, because Steve is a good actor and a little shit.

“I was a different person when I met you,” she says. “I thought I was doing some good. I don’t know, maybe I was, with you. I’ve been a lot of people, Steve. You know that. You’ve always known that about me.” She pauses, looking him straight in the eye. “You weren’t the only one who lost people.” 

His face twitches like he wants to look away, but he forces himself to return her gaze and his eyes soften.

“Now get your act together, Rogers, and let’s bring him home.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Russia**

**1928**

 

Natasha shivers, clenching her hands into fists to stop the tremble that threatens in her stomach every time she breathes. The girls on either side of her are just as cold, barely a hint of body-heat from them where their shoulders are pressed together against a metal wall. They’ve been here a long time, as more girls are brought slowly into the huge building, placed into line by two young women. There seems to be an order to it, but Natasha isn’t sure what it might be.

Fifty girls stand in the line when the big door at the end is shut. The slight icy breeze cuts off abruptly, and Natasha sighs as her teeth unclench. She is still cold, but the small relief almost makes her want to laugh. Through the thin metal walls she can hear engines sputtering as the soldiers leave, but she pays it little mind. Ivan Petrovich is already long gone, and Vitya. Natasha had been the second girl brought in, early this morning.

The two young women walk past the line of girls, pulling one forward, nudging another, swatting the shoulder-blades of the girl next to Natasha and hissing at her to “stand up straight, child!” Natasha herself receives a grudging nod; her shoulders are back, her head up, and she has not moved from the place she was put in two hours ago. As they check the last girl, Natasha notes that their fingers are trembling, even though their dresses are woven from thick wool.

The women step away moments before a door opens in the wall opposite. A man steps through, thin and very tall, followed by a sweet-faced woman. They pause, looking at the line of girls, and the man leans far down to whisper to the woman. She nods and steps away, hands tucked behind her back.

“You have been recruited,” she begins, voice low and resonant even as it echoes hollowly in the metal building. “You are all orphans— yes, my dears, every one of you— and you have been given into our keeping. As is only right, you must give something in return. You will be raised to do great things for our country.”

A soft murmur begins among the girls. Natasha bites hard on the inside of her cheek to keep silent.

“Oh?” The woman’s voice has gone silk-soft. “Do any of you object?” The responding silence is instant and absolute. “You may leave, of course,” she continues, “but you will not receive such a chance again. You are here because you have no relations, or none that would accept you. Without us, you will very likely starve. But we are not cruel; if you wish to leave, you may leave.”

“Where is my brother?” Natasha snaps her mouth shut, but it is too late; the words echo in the air even as her teeth clack together. The woman turns a fraction, glancing at her with amber eyes.

“Viktor Yurievich Alianova, yes? He is being placed with a family this very moment. Good people. He will be the son of a blacksmith. Do you wish to leave? We will bring him to you, and you may go.”

Natasha meets the woman’s eyes, even though it makes her shoulders itch with tightness.

“How old are you, child?” The woman’s voice is not unkind. Natasha thinks for a moment, considers the turning of the season.

“Six,” she whispers after a moment.

“Six,” the woman repeats. “Yes, as are you all. How will you make your way in the world, Natalya Yurievna Alianova?”

Natasha shivers again, though she is no longer very cold. “Blacksmithing is a good trade,” she whispers after a long moment, and drops her gaze.

“Good,” the woman replies. “Now. I am Irina Petrovna Aliyeva. You will think of me like an auntie, for I will be helping to take care of you from now on. First, we will call your name from a list, and you will be examined by the doctor. When you hear your name, step forward...”

* * *

 The examinations take up most of the day, as they are passed through endless rooms and corridors, questioned and prodded and washed. Natalya is starving as she and the other girls are finally released and shepherded into yet another room, this one full of round tables and the savory smell of stew. They’re split apart as they enter, each group ushered to a table by a young woman. The women are dressed much as the ones in the first room had been, in long black dresses of plain, fine-spun wool.

At the far end of the room is an open fireplace, the flames in it licking high, filling the room with a nearly overwhelming warmth. After the cold morning and a scrubbing in tepid water, it is a relief, and Natasha shivers in pleasure, feeling the heat seeping down to her bones. She stretches out her fingers as she pulls herself into a chair, smiling at the pink fresh-scrubbed skin of her hands. She’d always liked having baths.

A young woman sits on her left, placing her hands on the table and waiting calmly as her charges settle themselves at the table. As the last girl climbs onto her chair, the woman brings out a slim book. Natasha stares at it, curious. She’d only seen two books before, and they’d been much larger and bound in leather, while this one is as thin as her thumb, and covered in brown cloth, with something stamped on the front.

“You must be hungry, my loves,” the woman says, a smile splitting her narrow face. Natasha smiles back cautiously, along with the other girls. “We have very good food here, and you may eat as much of it as you like. We understand the needs of growing children, after all. Now. Can any of you read?”

The girl on Natasha’s other side raises a cautious hand, dark eyes wide in her round face. Across from her a sturdy blonde girl does the same. Natasha doesn’t. She pulls her hands from the edge of the table and puts them beneath her legs, looking down.

“Good, good. Now, each of you are to read before you eat. My name is Kalina Yanovna, and I will be your teacher, except for the things Irina Petrovna will teach you, and for dancing. Today, we will start with a sentence each.” She opens the book and hands it to the girl on her left. Natasha feels heat sting at her cheeks and pulls a hand out from beneath her legs to scrub at them.

The dark-eyed girl on her right leans over as the other girl stares at the page, pushing against Natasha with her shoulder. “I will help you.”

Natasha glares back. “I don’t need help.”

“You didn’t raise your hand.”

“I—” She stops. Shrugs. The girl smiles, and it is the first time in weeks that Natasha has trusted a smile. She glances again at the girl with the book, who is shakily mouthing the letters that Kalina Yanovna traces with a finger. “Thank you,” she whispers back.

“What’s your name?”

“Natalya Yurievna.”

Kalina Yanovna turns towards them and arches an eyebrow. Natasha bites her lip and flushes, falling silent.

A moment later, the girl whispers again, leaning closer. “I’m Viktoria Valerievna… but you could call me Vika, if we are friends.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and shoves the girl with her shoulder. “Shh.”

Even quieter: “Are we friends?”

Natasha ignores it, watching as the book is finally passed to the next girl, the blonde, who reads it easily, a smirk hovering at the edges of her mouth, and passes it on. The next girl stumbles worse than the first.

Natasha narrows her eyes, then tips her head towards her neighbor. “Natasha,” she whispers, and bites her lip to hide the smile when Vika cheers quietly. Kalina Yanovna turns back to them and shushes them, eyes fierce.

Underneath the table, Vika reaches for Natasha’s hand, and clasps it tight in hers.

 


	5. Chapter 5

“Jesus, what happened to you?”

Natasha just grunts and flips Clint off, pulling off her boots as she walks into his quarters.

“No,” he says warningly, setting his game controller aside, watching her warily as she approaches. “No, Nat,  no awwww  why .”

She shrugs as best she can from her sprawl across his couch and lap.

“Not that I mind,” he adds, “but I actually put clean clothes on and everything. This is  bad habits , Nat, we’re supposed to be breaking those.” His hands belie his words, slipping under the back of her shirt and tracing the long muscles there. His hands are warm, the callouses familiar against her skin. Natasha lets herself make a pleased noise, and wriggles half-heartedly closer to his warmth.

“I’m surprised you aren’t still down there.” Clint’s voice is soft. “Bad?”

Nat shrugs, rolls her head from side to side.

“Hmm,” Clint says, pulling his hands free and reaching for her mussed hair. “Lisbon bad, or Missoula bad?”

Natasha spares the energy to lift her head, tilting her face up to him. “Remember the cult in Greenland?”

Clint sucks a whistling breath through his teeth, eyebrows arching.

“I’d rather do that again. Without gear.”

He laughs, one quick bark of amusement. Natasha drops her head against his leg again. They stay that way until long past dusk, Clint’s fingers gently rubbing at her scalp. Natasha’s eyes drift closed, but she doesn’t sleep. 

Sometime past midnight she forces herself upright, stretching like a cat over a snoring Clint until she can reach the edge of the couch and slip off. She contemplates going to sleep. She’s still running low, but no amount of exhaustion is going to put off the inevitable call to assemble.Every time she closes her eyes, her thoughts wander to the man several floors below, and sleep eludes her. She goes to the gym instead.

There are several gyms scattered throughout the Avengers-only levels of the tower, but the one Natasha likes best is a narrow room just below Tony’s penthouse. One wall is entirely windows, and the opposite entirely mirrors. It feels like infinity. And she’s the only one who seems to use it, at any time of day. She starts with yoga, forcing herself to move at a glacial pace, before working her way through a ballet sequence she hasn’t done in years. Her shoulders only seem to tighten with each breath, so she puts on music and just moves, flinging herself across the room with something just short of abandon. It’s nothing like her normal routine.

At the end of two hours she’s sweaty and exhausted and yet still nearly vibrating with some feeling she shies away from analyzing. She drops to the floor like her strings have been cut, staring out into the city. When the horizon begins to tint pink, she hears footsteps approach the door and stop just outside.

“Come in,” she says after a few minutes of silence and shuffling. The door swings in to admit Thor, wearing a shirt tight enough to put Steve to shame, and black pants to match.

“Your Grace,” he says with a small smile, offering his hand. Natasha takes it and arches an eyebrow as he pulls her to her feet.

“I’m sure you’re going to explain that.”

“Hmm,” he says, releasing her hand and stepping away. “You’ve been in this room for some time.”

Natasha thinks about responding. Then she shrugs, and steps away, sliding easily into a yoga pose again.

“Has it calmed you?” Thor turns and mimics her, hands flat on the floor. Natasha counts to ten and twists into a far more difficult pose. He copies it easily, more flexible than she expected. She files that  away for tactical reference even as he speaks again; “Darcy has told me this is a method to calm the mind, as well as train the body. And yet you move as though a chain weighs upon you.”

“Do you have an alternative ?”

“Certainly. Spar with me.”

“No,” she says, breathing in deeply. “I had enough fighting for one day.”

“Ah,” Thor says, standing up straight and turning to face her. “But that was yesterday, and today, guilt crawls through you like worms in rotten meat. Fight me, or speak to him. Nothing else will lance that infection, I think.”

“Mixing your metaphors a little.” Natasha stands and faces him anyway. “Go easy on me?”

“I would not dare.”

Natasha grins like a wolf and launches herself at him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Russia**

**1928/1929**

 

After dinner, they’re taken to a long, narrow room. It has twenty-five beds to a side, with a small dresser beside each of them. Each group of five beds is covered in a blanket of a different color, and Natasha is glad when she’s led to the very furthest bed on the left, which has a blanket of deep green. Vika is given the one beside her, and beyond her is the fair-haired girl who read so easily at dinner.

Her name is Ekaterina Borisovna, she tells them, as soon as their minders have left for the night. She is louder than Natasha likes, and immediately slides out of her bed and onto Vika’s when the door closes, though they were told to stay in their places and sleep. Natasha frowns at her, tugging her blankets up to her chin, but to her irritation Vika is entranced by the girl’s description of her recent past.

“Go to sleep,” she hisses after a moment. Both girls turn to her, surprised. Natasha narrows her eyes. “No one cares where you came from, but if you don’t follow the rules, they won’t let us stay!”

Ekaterina only smirks in response. “Nobody cares where _you_ came from. You must be a peasant, if you can’t read.”

Natasha stares at the girl’s broad, freckled face for a moment, glances at her stocky body and square hands, and blinks. Ekaterina goes very pale beneath those freckles, and in a blur of surprisingly fast movement launches herself onto Natasha’s bed, the metal frame squeaking under the sudden impact.

“My papa was a _professor_ ,” she hisses, saying the word as if it should be carried on a velvet cushion. “Just because you think I look like-- like--”

“I didn’t say anything,” Natasha says quietly. “My papa was a woodcarver, and… and wolves killed him. And my mama.”

Ekaterina sits back on her heels and looks away.

“The car crashed,” Vika offers quietly. “My big brother got a very good job, and they went to celebrate, in Uncle’s car, and now everyone is dead except me.” Her voice breaks as she speaks, the last words barely choked out.

Natasha bites her lip, glancing at the blonde girl on her bed. Ekaterina looks back with narrowed eyes, and after a moment they both slide off the bed and crawl into Vika’s, on either side of the crying girl.

The rush and newness of the day has worn off, and exhaustion sits like a fog over the room. As Vika’s breathing slows, Natasha hears sniffles and muffled sobs throughout the room, and no few whispers. Once Vika is asleep, Natasha and Ekaterina return to their beds without exchanging even a glance. Natasha falls asleep listening to a room full of soft breaths and stifled whimpers.

In the morning Vika proclaims them a trio. Ekaterina suffers being called Katya with an ill grace that does nothing to stop Vika’s relentless cheer, and Natasha finds that she likes Katya’s sharp smile and watchful eyes. The other two girls of their learning group are quieter; bird-thin Anya, and Masha who seems to cry every other moment. Natasha ignores them, mostly, more interested in learning everything put before her.

Reading, it turns out, is not the only thing they must learn. Kalina Yanovna gives them sums to complete before they are allowed breakfast, and riddles before lunch. But there is good, warm food at every meal for those who can complete the tasks; Natasha’s bones quickly ache with growth, and her cheeks grow rounder with health. Some of the girls are sick with the bounty of it the first week.

Between meals, they are set other lessons.

In the morning they are sent to a small man who offers them no name, whose stark black clothes draw all color from his face. He sets them to _releveés_ and _pliés_ and slaps their limbs into place with a cane Natasha has never seen him use for walking. Every last girl weeps after the first class, and more than a few during. The most he gives Natasha after three months is a sharp nod, but here Katya excels, earning the first kind word from their teacher -- _acceptable_. She’s giddy and insufferable with the pride of it for nearly a week, until Natasha and Vika put snow in her bed and laugh themselves sick at her wild shrieks. She forgives them, eventually.

Afternoons are changeable. Sometimes, they sits in sharp-clean scented rooms for hours on end, waiting patiently while needles methodically pierce their skin or their pulse is taken. Sometimes Natasha answers questions, or solve puzzles. She likes these days the best: no talking, no contortions, no wrong answers. She’s good at the puzzles, and she’s fast. The man that gives them to her is gentler than the rest, and if she finishes before the timer he gives her paper and a pencil to draw what she wishes.

Sometimes they line up in the courtyard, and fight like shadows in the snow. This teacher gives his name: Achille Abbaticchio (they must call him only Achille). This teacher is kind, and patient. He will give directions again and again, in his barely-comprehensible broken Russian, until Natasha’s form is pleasing and her movements clean and powerful. He never pushes them into place, never corrects awkward limbs with nudges or blows, but when he leans behind Natasha to murmur direction, her heart leaps like a startled rabbit and thunders in her chest.

Still, the worst days are the ones spent with Irina Petrovna. Natasha learns to serve a table, pouring tea and wine with elegance. She walks with a book on her head until her back aches and her steps are as smooth as water. She learns that a sharp tongue is hidden behind Irina Petrovna’s sweet face, one that does not care for rustic accents. So Natasha learns to shape her words like the town-bred girls, listening to their chatter at meals, rolling her tongue around their sounds, until her words are smooth and gentle and she can’t remember the way her father said her name.

Natasha barely notices the passing of time until Irina Petrovna stands at breakfast one day and raps her knuckles against the wooden table. Silence falls almost instantly. Natasha pauses with a thick slice of dark bread pressed against her lips, and considers the result of eating it anyway. After a moment she sets it down, biting back a sigh. Across from her Katya smirks, cheeks bulging with a last-second bite of porridge, and Natasha has to pinch herself hard to keep from laughing or rolling her eyes.

“All of you girls have come so far, this past year. We are so very proud of you. Perhaps you have not realized, but today is the anniversary of the day you were all brought to us and, in celebration, we have decided to make it a birthday for all of you. Today, girls, you are seven, and you are free for the day! You will have no lessons to attend.”

A murmur begins as soon as Irina Petrovna stops speaking. Katya is wide-eyed, still with a mouthful of porridge tucked into her cheek. Natasha grabs Vika’s shoulder.

“What do we do if there’s no classes?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Katya hisses from across the table, eyes gleaming.

Kalina Yanovna makes a faint noise of distress, but her charges are too excited to care.

“I _like_ dancing, though,” Masha says, frowning.

Katya rolls her eyes. “You can dance tomorrow. When else will we get a chance like this?”

“Next year,” Natasha suggests, and Katya shoots her a look that clearly says _shut your mouth_.

“The garden,” Vika suggests, and they all quickly murmur in agreement.

The sound of knuckles rapping on the table silences the room once more. “Yes, girls, no lessons for today. I did not say, however, that your training would stop. It only changes.” Irina Petrovna smiles sweetly and steps down from the raised floor by the fireplace, beckoning two girls from a nearby table. They all watch in silence as the girls rise from their table, with smooth motions and smiles on their faces.

“Hold out your hands, my dears,” Irina Petrovna says.

The girls obey instantly, slender arms outstretched. Irina Petrovna gestures elegantly with her left hand, and a young woman rises from her table holding manacles linked by a short, thin chain. Natasha stops breathing. The girls shrink back as their wrists are grabbed and chained together, then their ankles. The room has gone still.

“From now on, you will do everything together,” Irina Petrovna continues. “Eating. Lessons. When you can complete every task as perfectly together as apart, we shall move on from this stage.” She gestures again, and the young woman gently ushers the pair from the room.

Vika gropes blindly for Natasha’s hand, squeezing as names are called off. No girl dares to refuse, but they move slowly and awkwardly, excitement burned away like morning mist in the sun.

“Viktoria Valerievna Gusina.” Natasha clenches Vika’s hand tight in hers. Vika rises shakily and steps away, fingers untangling from Natasha’s.

“Ekaterina Borisovna Raspopova.” Katya goes quickly, catching up to Vika and pushing her forward. Her face is like stone. They are chained together hand and foot and sent from the room like all the girls before them. Natasha watches them leave, biting her tongue to remain silent.

“Natalya Yurievna Alianova.” She’s up before she realizes it, so accustomed to obedience that her movement outpaces her thoughts. Another name is called, but she doesn’t hear it, and finds herself faintly surprised when Masha steps up beside her. They extend their arms almost as one.

The chain is colder than Natasha expects, and lighter. The manacles press against her skin in a constant reminder as she and Masha are escorted out into the hall. Vika and Katya are still there, and most of the other girls, the hall filled with aborted movement and stilted whispers. The air is too warm, thick with the breath of thirty girls, and Natasha can hear names continuing inexorably on behind her. It’s too much, all too tight and pressing. She reaches for Katya’s shoulder, pushing her towards the courtyard door at the end of the hall.

“We can still go to the garden,” she says, and half-drags Masha along beside her.


	7. Chapter 7

Natasha leaves the gym aching pleasantly and more tired than she cares to admit. She pauses in the elevator before asking JARVIS to send her to Clint’s floor. Her own rooms are only a floor above his, but his feel like a safehouse when she walks into them, despite (or because of) the ubiquitous smell of stale pizza. Clint is still asleep on the couch when she walks in, draped inelegantly over the arm and snoring. She crouches and picks up his hearing aid as she passes, setting it carefully onto the narrow table behind the couch.

Clint’s clothes live mostly in the canvas hamper next to his bedroom door, on the bed, or somewhere on the floor in between the two. All the clothes in the closet are Natasha’s, mostly simple things she can throw on when she stays over. She pulls a black camisole halfway off a hanger before she spots a flicker of silver at the far end of the rail.

She stops, breathing harder than she had when she finished sparring with Thor. She leans in and shoves a handful of hangers roughly to the side, uncovering the steel-gray dress she’d worn to the party Tony had thrown after the fiasco in D.C. He’d called it a “Congrats, Your Lives Are Now Public Information” party. She pulls the garment off the hanger, running her thumbs over the loose knit of the shimmery fabric, the short, heavy cowl neck pinned down by three silver studs, the stiff belt at the waist. It’s softer than she remembers; the skirt flares dangerously around her hips when she moves.

Natasha takes it into the bathroom with her and lays it gently on the counter before turning the shower on to a scalding heat and stepping in. Normally she uses Clint’s soap, not caring what takes the sweat and grime of battle off her skin, but this time she reaches for a small blue bottle tucked at the back of the highest shelf in the shower, flicking the cap and breathing in the faint scent of apples. She moves with slow intent, humming as she bends to wash her legs. The residue of many days and battles rinses gray into the drain.

The air is thick and warm when she steps out of the shower, squeezing her hair in a soft towel. She wipes fog away from the mirror with her hand and opens the top drawer to her right. It's a system she's had with Clint for close to a decade: she takes the right, he takes the left. She hasn't checked, but the left-hand drawers in her bathroom are probably filled with stolen hotel shower caps and spare arrowheads.

She pulls out a handful of black plastic squares from her extensive makeup stash, then glances at the dress and puts half of them back. _Classic_ , she thinks. _Simple_. The squares and matching tubes are laid out in front of her in a grid, like a gun broken down to be cleaned.

It takes less than five minutes to outline her eyes in smokey blue-black, lips in a red just a breath more rose than cherry. She could make herself a different person with a handful of colors and the right information, and has done so many times; but today she has other goals. She french braids her hair and drops the towel where Clint is most likely to step on it before dressing with rapid efficiency. The dress slips heavy over her head like chain mail. She pulls open the second drawer and has the small glass bottle inside halfway to her wrist before she pauses.

It had been a gift from an old friend, from an old life. It’s not the same bottle but it is the same scent; the classic perfume that throws her back in time into a bar where drinks were flowing freely and, on the date she gave as her birthday, a woman with rouged lips, perfectly rolled hair, and deep brown eyes had presented her with a little box purchased in Paris .

But Natasha sets the Chanel down and reaches into the back of the drawer for another bottle, this one blue, clunky and plastic, with a tween singer's face and gold-painted charms all over it. A Christmas gift from Tony she sprays on her wrists with a smile before she can second-guess the choice. It smells like sugar and glitters faintly on her skin.

She leaves Clint still asleep on the couch and walks to the elevators with her shoulders back and head high.

“R&D six, please,” she says quietly. She barely feels the movement until the elevator slows, then drops, before pausing a floor above her destination.

“Your heart-rate is slightly elevated, Miss Romanoff,” JARVIS says. “I thought perhaps you would like a moment to prepare.”

“That’s very considerate, JARVIS,” she says quietly, polite as the AI is polite, and she finds herself liking it despite her reasonable judgement. “But not necessary.”

JARVIS doesn’t reply, but the elevator moves again and the doors _ding_ open onto a glass-and-steel hive of science, and Natasha lets her determination carry her onward on clicking black heels.


	8. Chapter 8

**Russia**

**1929**

 

Natasha doesn’t stop when she pushes through the heavy door at the end of the hall, doesn’t pause in the courtyard where they are taught to make weapons of themselves. She drags Masha through the gate at the far end, outside the stifling square of buildings. Katya and Vika stumbling to keep up. She doesn’t stop until she’s halfway into the vegetable garden that runs the length of one long wall, and the cool breeze breathes softly over her flushed skin.

“Natasha,” Katya calls, half-dragging Vika herself. “Stop, Natasha. Look.” She points past the edge of the compound, where the rolling hills begin angling into mountains. Sun glints off the distant white, and for a moment, Natasha stands still, breathing in the scent of snow and pine, until Katya and Vika catch up. Masha breathes hard beside her, glaring between gasps. Katya shoves Natasha hard in the shoulder when they’ve caught up, scoffing. “It’s only another new thing, Natalya, don’t go mad over it. Come on, let’s hide before Kalina comes out and makes us go back.”

She takes off at a fast walk towards the far end of the garden, where carrots give way to apple trees whose furthest branches tangle into an overgrown blackberry bush.

“No,” Masha says weakly, tugging lightly on the chain that connects her wrist to Natasha’s. “Let’s go back inside.”

“It will make you stronger,” Natasha replies, and starts walking, ignoring the faint sound of protest from Masha. They catch up to the other girls quickly, Katya leading the way through a faint path in the thorny labyrinth until they reach a small clearing where the ground dips down and tips shallowly towards the south.

“See,” Katya says, eyes bright and eyebrows arched. “I found it last month, when Mila fell and they let us out from dance early.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Vika says, frowning, even as Natasha nods.

“I thought you went to the kitchen,” she says, “but I like this better.” The little clearing is somehow warmer than the rest of the garden, with a low mound of earth along the far edge that makes it feel enclosed, like they’ve stepped into a secret world. There’s a well at the center, a ring of stone crumbling at one edge. Katya pulls two still-warm rolls from her shirt and hands one to Masha, splitting the other between herself and Vika. Natasha takes the half she’s handed absentmindedly, looking at the trees that surround them.

“It reminds me of home,” Masha says, and Natasha makes a noise of agreement. It truly does. The breath of warmth, the feel of welcoming forest. Hints of a more southern place, instead of this frigid mountain they’ve become accustomed to. She laughs, suddenly, and feels like running.

She launches herself at Vika instead, Masha yelping as she’s dragged along. All four of them go down in a tangled, giggling pile, elbows and knees and hair flying. They lay like that in the meager warmth of the glade for a long time, whispering and laughing.

“I’m hungry,” Katya says, when the sun marks noon in the pale blue sky. There’s a murmur of agreement, and they spend a few moments untangling themselves.

“I don’t want to go back, though,” Vika says as she clambers to her feet. “I like it here.” Her gaze flicks from one girl to another, dark eyes wide in her face. “What if we ate from the garden?”

Katya laughs, nearly doubling over with the force of it. Natasha can’t keep the grin from her face, and even quiet Masha giggles. “Viktoria, breaking a rule! What has the world come to?” Katya cries out, their chains rattling between them as she lurches into her friend. “Has the sun fallen from the sky?”

“Hush,” Vika says, laughing and shoving Katya back. “No one will miss the apples if we take a few. Natasha, you go, you climb the best.”

“ _I_ don’t,” Masha protests, but she follows Natasha through the blackberry bush easily enough. Chained together as they are, Natasha can only reach the very lowest branches. Masha makes a pocket of her skirt, and they manage to collect enough apples to make themselves sick on.

Katya is sitting on the edge of the well like it’s a throne when they return, Vika peering over the edge.

“Apples,” Natasha calls out, making her voice waver like an old woman. “Sweet apples for pies!”

“Bring them here,” Katya says, “and I’ll pay you handsomely. I found a good rock.” She holds up something that shines slightly in her palm. Masha spills the apples from her skirt to the ground and drops onto the well beside Katya.

A sharp crack echoes through the clearing. Then a grinding sound, and Natasha opens her mouth to ask _what is that_ , before she is yanked forward. She hears screaming, feels it in her bones, her own voice no less shrill than the rest as a yelp escapes her. Everything pulses with a red wash of pain. Natasha struggles to open her eyes-- when had she closed them? Her shoulder screams, her head aches, she wants to cry.

Natasha reaches for the feeling as they’ve been taught to do, asking _why_. Her arm is hooked over the edge of the well, her body jammed against the crumbling wall. There’s so much weight pulling on her--

The world sharpens to icy clarity so quickly Natasha feels rocked by the blow of it. Masha is sobbing, voice thick with pain, Vika moaning a low and horrified counterpoint. Natasha is the only one outside the well.

She braces her left arm against the earth at the base of the well, wincing but forcing herself to her knees. “Breathe, Masha,” she says, even as she edges left, where the well has not crumbled. She doesn’t want to look, wants with every fiber to run away, Mama and Papa lying dead behind her eyes as they haven’t in months, but her friends are down there, and she must. When she finally leans over the rim, her stomach lurches. Vika is caught by tree-roots at the bottom, Katya in the water below her. Masha hangs from Natasha’s hand and foot by their chained limbs, her pale hand grasping ineffectually at the slick stone wall. Her head is mess of blood, so much Natasha can’t tell where it all comes from.

“It will be all right,” she whispers shakily past a too-tight throat, struggling to think. Her arm hurts, but maybe-- she pulls at the chain slightly, trying to lift her friend, but the shift turns Masha’s sobs into a high-pitched scream. “No, no, no,” Natasha says, “No, Masha, just wait, it will be all right, as soon as you’re out, but you must reach for the wall as soon as you can. I can’t pull you all the way.”

There’s no response, but she takes it as assent and start pulling again, carefully, afraid to put any pressure against the wall of the well. The chain slides slowly against the rough stones as she leans back, a terrible scrape, then a pause so she can shift her grip. It seems to take an eternity, and then the ground she’s braced against shifts and the wall wobbles. Natasha freezes, not even breathing. There’s nothing else she can _do_.

Then Masha’s hand comes up over the side, and Natasha scrambles forward to pull her free of the well. Masha is crying still, and Natasha closes her eyes tight and turns her face away from the scraped-raw mess that is the right side of Masha’s face.

“Breathe,” she whispers, then leans over the wall again, careful not to touch. “Vika, can you climb?”

“No,” Vika says after a long moment, voice breaking. “Natasha, Katya won’t move.”

Nat curls her fingers into a fist, breath coming too fast. “Is- does- is she bleeding? Did she hit her head?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t pull her up, Natasha, my arm won’t move.”

“...wait,” Natasha says. “I will be back. Wait.” She turns clumsily, reaching for Masha and hauling her upright, gasping in pain as she lifts. Masha makes a soft noise of pain as well, but Natasha has no time for it. “It won’t be far, but if you don’t come they’ll die.”

She steps forward and Masha steps with her, half-falling, but with obvious determination. Natasha barely finds the path through the blackberries, pushing the thorns out of her face in irritation. She doesn’t pause in the garden, even when one of the minders rounds the corner and screams in horror. Natasha pushes straight through to the garden shed, a small brick building just outside the kitchen door. She drags Masha toward a tidy wall of tools, searching, and pulls down a pair of long-handled shears. Getting them into place is easy enough, but when she tries to push down, her already throbbing wrist shoots with pain, and she stumbles towards Masha like her strings have been cut. The other girl makes a soft noise of pain but doesn’t stagger, giving Natasha a moment to right herself.

“Both,” Masha says, voice dragging. Her pupils are wide and dark, her gaze distant out of her mutilated face, and Natasha isn’t convinced she can help, but she nods anyway, bracing her foot on the bottom handle and grabbing the upper with her good hand. Masha does the same, and they push. It takes too long, for a moment Natasha isn't sure the shears will give way before the chain-- and then it goes, the force of the snap reverberating up the tool and into their arms. They make quicker work of the second one, and as it clatters apart Natasha pushes Masha out the door before her.

“Go to the kitchen, Masha, go. Tell them what happened.” She pushes the girl gently. Masha takes one shaky step, then another, and it is enough, it has to be.  

She turns on her heel and darts back toward the far edge of the garden. Heavy footsteps start to sound behind her before she reaches it, but she doesn’t look back, forcing her injured leg to carry her back to the well through the screaming pain. She hears Vika’s sobs even before she clears the blackberry bush, forlorn wailing that echoes into the clearing.

Natasha reaches the well and stutters to a stop, staring into the dark depths, and then Achille is looming behind her, one broad hand on her shoulder pulling her away from the well. He shouts for rope, flinging himself flat to the ground and reaching into the well. Adults rush into the clearing and Natasha steps back, and back again. Her body sags though she wills it upright, her limbs exhausted. The adults are still shouting as rope is brought to Achille. Natasha hears it all as though through a storm, faint and rushing.

She sees Vika first, as the girl is pulled to firm ground and her chains are quickly cut. Someone wraps her in a blanket and picks her up. Vika is dwarfed by the woolen blanket and the arms of the man carrying her, and Natasha notices for the first time how thin her arms are, how small and fragile she looks. _I should go with her_ , Natasha thinks, but she doesn’t move, staring blankly at the well as Katya is pulled limply from it.

Her face is sweet, as it is when she sleeps, and for a moment Natasha is filled with relief. Then someone reaches for her, and her head lolls strangely to the side, like a broken doll. A piercing noise breaks through the murmurs in the clearing, rising in pitch and volume until Natasha is gasping for breath and she realizes she is the one making the terrible sound.

Hands reach for her. She fights them, struggling against the lethargy in her limbs, pushing and shoving, until something begins to wind firmly around her shoulders, wool scratching at the back of her neck. She twists at the waist, bringing her arms up to push the blanket off, sinking teeth into the grasping hand that holds it. More shouting, but she ignores it, flinging herself through a gap in the forest of legs and bolting to Katya’s side.

“Katya,” she whispers, reaching for the girl’s shoulder. The fabric of her dress is soaked through and painfully cold as Natasha shakes her. “Katya, wake up now. It’s done now, you’re out, you’re all right.”

But Katya’s head rolls to the side as Natasha shakes her, neck loose and wrong. Natasha whimpers when she feels the bones grind, fear crawling up her lungs and nestling in her throat as she reaches for Katya’s face and turns her head back. “Katya, look at me, please. Wake up, please.” Her skin is colder than the sodden dress, and strange beneath Natasha’s fingertips, slick and unforgiving. Her eyes are open, though, the apple-green shade unchanged, and Natasha knows she must be all right. If only she would wake up.

“Come now, girl,” Achille says, crouching beside her. He radiates heat, and Natasha begins to lean into it - but if she is cold, Katya must be even colder. She stills herself and counts her breaths, reaching for the buttons of Katya’s dress to pull the wet cloth away from her skin. She knows this is what you must do when someone is cold. But Achille grunts, reaching for Natasha.“Step away. Someone, get other girl. Now!”

“No,” Natasha says. “No, no, no, no--”

“Let her stay.” Irina Petrovna’s voice cuts through the furor like a shard of ice, as serene as ever. Natasha sees the woman’s river-blue skirt from the corner of her eye as she steps close. “Can she be saved?”

Achille makes a sound of disgust. “Girl is dead. Other one should be gone from here, _donna senza cuore_.”

Irina Petrovna hums under her breath, leaning down to rest her fingers against Katya’s throat. Natasha keeps frozen, eyes glued to Katya’s blank ones, but she knows the sharp, cold smile that must rest on the woman’s lips as she straightens.  “ _Non crudele_ , Achille. _Solo pratico_. Well. It’s a complete loss, then. A pity. She had potential.” She raises her voice, pitching it through the whole of the clearing. “We were all aware of the possibility. This is a disappointment, but not a tragedy. Please behave yourselves with dignity.”

Slow nods follow her words, and the air seems to change. Their frantic motions slow and still. A woman steps forward to lay a blanket over Katya. Natasha cannot still her heart, her breath coming fast as the words echo in her mind. Achille reaches for her shoulder, pulling her into his arms as he stands. She keeps her eyes fixed on Katya and tries not to tremble as Irina Petrovna’s cool, damp fingers trace her cheek.

“You did well, my child. Quick thinking, quick action. I’m proud of you. Why, Natalya- you’re shaking.”  She glances to the side, snapping her fingers. “A corpse needs no warmth, fool. Bring that here.” Her words are quickly obeyed, and Natasha tries to swallow the noise that struggles in her throat as Katya is uncovered once more and her blanket wrapped around Natasha with quick efficiency.

“There,” Irina Petrovna continues, “much better. We should protect our assets, should we not?” She seems to expect something in return. Natasha forces herself to meet the woman’s eyes, but has no words to lay before that distant gaze.

Achille turns away and Natasha is grateful, She doesn’t want to look at Katya any more, or Irina Petrovna, or anyone. She leans into his warm chest but keeps her eyes open despite the exhaustion pressing behind them. She won’t close her eyes, she will keep them open forever.

She remembers how it goes, and her dreams that night are pale and cold.


	9. Chapter 9

Natasha leans in the doorway of the small observation room, watching Steve watch Bucky. The entire wall looks like a glass panel between this room and the next, though Natasha knows it’s a solid foot of steel alloy reinforced with some new development of Tony’s. Steve sits in the only chair in the room, tipped on its back legs with his feet against the display wall, talking in a low and even voice.

“...so they’re driving up this stick-thin road, straight cliff up on one side, down on the other, and I’m thinkin’ I was crazy for talking you into it-- Buck, you were green to the gills-- I was sure they were gonna drive right off the side of the cliff, but hell, they were offering a dollar for the day, an’ ma’d just lost hours at the hospital--”

“Sounds like an adventure,” Natasha says. Steve pauses and drops his chair to the ground with a thunk, turning his head just a little towards her.

“No, that was when we got halfway up and a big truck comes down, and we gotta back up halfway down the road with the wheels slippin’ off the side.”

“Has he said anything, yet?” She steps up behind Steve, looking at Bucky where he sits motionless in the corner of the other room. 

“No,” Steve says, the Brooklyn slipping back out of his voice. “Woke up a couple of hours ago, took stock of the room, and sat down like that.” He stretches, tipping his head back to look up at her. “JARVIS wouldn’t let me in here until I took a shower.”

“Good,” she says softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. The smile he gives her in response is lopsided and dishonest, a mere twitch of mouth muscles. Her gaze drifts back up to the display and narrows her eyes at the man in the other room. “ _ солда T _ ! ”

Steve straightens in surprise at her sharp tone, but Bucky remains utterly still. They stay like that for long, silent moments, before Steve smiles again, this one small, the ghost of it in his eyes. 

“How about you,” he says, “what was a girl like you doin’ in ‘29?”

Natasha’s heart trips. “I don’t remember,” she says.

“I thought we weren’t doing the lies anymore.”

“I told you enough.” She steps back, turning towards the door. Steve’s on his feet in an instant, darting around her side. He doesn’t block her way, but he reaches towards her... before thinking better of it and letting his arms fall to his sides.

“You, Nat. I want to know about you. You know, some of the men thought you really were some kind of princess, but we never asked… I want to know what made you, you.”

Natasha tips her head, drawing her lips back tight against her teeth in a grimace. Steve shifts back on his heels, the set of his shoulders screaming  _ defense _ . “Nothing  _ made _ me, Rogers. I am what I am.”

“Come on,” he says, looking wounded. “You don’t mean that. Something changed after the war. You’re different, and not just your face. And nobody’s just  _ born _ like that. They did something to you. You’re a weapon, Nat. They gave you the serum and you turned into a weapon, like--” he gestures forcefully at the display pane. “You have to let someone in eventually!”

“Are you talking to me, or to him?” She tilted her head, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. “Or yourself, Rogers?” 

“Himself, probably.” The voice is low, rusted with disuse, and has both Natasha and Steve darting toward the display.

“Bucky, Christ, Buck-- is-- are you--?” Steve’s pressed against the wall like a child begging for a puppy. Natasha stops a half-step behind, eyes darting over Barnes’s frame, hunting. 

“ _ I know you, Winter Soldier _ ,” she murmurs low in Russian, which makes Steve give her a dirty look. She crosses her arms, watching the man behind the glass. He moves slowly, methodically, but brushes imaginary dust from his pants before looking up. He looks at her, not Steve.

“ _ I know you, too, _ ”  he replies in kind. She forces herself to look into his eyes. They are bright, less distant, but -- there is something there. Something that makes the skin between her shoulderblades crawl. “ _ I always did. Did you think changing your face would hide you from me? Your eyes are the same, Natalia . _ ”

Steve turns his head slowly between the two of them. “So,” he says, voice pure Captain. “I’m guessing that’s a ‘no’.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Steve. I’m not the snake in the grass, here.” Bucky jerks his head toward Natasha, a ghost of his old smile slipping across his mouth. “SHIELD, Hydra, Red Room-- have you picked your side yet, Natalia Alianovna?”

“ _ Me? _ ”  It slips out unbidden, her voice high. From the corner of her eye, she sees a change come over Steve; his muscles tense, then relax as he turns on his heel with a dancer’s grace.

“Widow,” he says, voice utterly devoid of emotion. “Care to elaborate?”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about.” She steps rapidly back as Steve takes a large step forward. “I  _ don’t _ !”

“You know, I find it a little hard to believe you at this point.” He takes another step forward. “It’s nothing but lies, one after another. And they’re so... god, I  _ want _ to believe them.”

“Steve, I swear--”

“Are you even-- are you really Natalia from the war? Or was that just another thing for you to manipulate? Who  _ are _ you?” His face twists, the same blend of rage and frustration she’s seen on him a hundred times. Captain America without a target. 

Natasha tilts her head, offering a wry imitation of a smile. She imagines cutting the threads that connect her to The Anastasia, watching them fluttering apart like silk ribbon. The safest path, the life she already lives. “You asked, Cap. You heard what you wanted to hear. The facts are simple. The Red Room recruited me, trained me, and set me loose on the world. And now, I’m here. Fighting  _ with _ you.”

His face softens, for a moment.

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova, born 1923, recruited to the nascent Red Room project by an unnamed soldier at age five,” Barnes says blandly, as if reading off a report. “Recruited again in 1938 when the program was resurrected and chosen as the subject for Dr. Erskine’s serum.” He straightens, face tightening. “You know who runs the Red Room, Steve? Hydra.You know who sent us to die on a goddamned train in the middle of nowhere? She’s standing right next to you.” 

“No,” Natasha whispers.

“And then SHIELD recruits her. Peggy fucking recruits her, and then SHIELD sends her off to take down the Red Room, and she runs for the fucking hills. Can’t burn your master, right?”

“I  _ did _ take it down.” Bile burns low in her throat, facts and possibilities bouncing around her mind so quickly it’s dizzying. “I killed her.”

“Aliyeva? You took some personal revenge and thought that was enough? You  _ left  _ me with Hydra, and you thought that was enough?” 

_ You left me with Hydra _ .  Steve is staring at Barnes, mouth open. His chest heaves in time with his gasping breaths, and Natasha knows a split second before he turns.  _ You left me with Hydra _ : she runs now, or she dies in this room. It’s not even a choice. She’s dashing for the elevators before Steve realizes what he’s going to do.

“She’s a fucking double agent, Steve, and she always has been, and she always will be!” Barnes yells after her, snarled over Steve’s pounding footsteps. “I don’t remember shit about most of it, but I remember that!”

The elevator doors part before her and slam shut behind her, and Natasha flings herself into the corner, braced for impact. The car begins rising immediately.

“Sir has been informed of the situation, Miss Romanoff.” JARVIS’s voice is as even as it always is. 

“Thank you,” she says. “I think.”

“For what it may be worth, I believe the evidence weighs against Sergeant Barnes’s claims,” the AI continues as the elevator slows. Natasha springs to her feet before the doors open, ready to move. 

“ _Yeah, J’s not wrong_.” Tony’s voice crackles from the elevator speakers. “ _Not sure the tin soldier is, either. Come into my parlor, spider, and let’s have us a chat_.” 


	10. Chapter 10

** Russia **

** 1937 **

 

Natasha always knows when she’s dreaming. The world stutters and jolts, things not where they’re meant to be; everything hazy and colorless. There should be twenty-one beds in the dormitory, not fifty. Masha shouldn’t stare at her like all the other girls as she walks down the aisle between the beds, nor Katya, her eyes glazed white. Vika is sleeping beside her, chained hand and foot, and that’s right; but she’s also awake in her bed, weeping.

As Natasha stares, Katya’s skin begins to change, her face growing puffy and grey before the flesh begins to peel and slip away, revealing the bone and sinew beneath. Years upon years of death pile on her while Natasha watches -- seven years in the dirt, seven years of maggots and rot.

_ No,  _ Natasha screams, voiceless.  _ No, no ,  come back _ _._ No use: the muscles are shriveling and blackening, revealing a skeleton beneath them that laughs and laughs and laughs, before it crumbles into dust.

Irina Petrovna’s voice snakes along the back of Natasha’s neck like wet fingertips.  _ You did well, Natalya. You did well.  _

Natasha wakes with a shudder, handcuff clanking against the bedframe as her arm jerks. 

"Good morning." Vika's voice is a low whisper. Natasha gives the chain a slower, more experimental pull, furrowing her brow before grudgingly cracking an eye open. Vika's face is inches from hers, dark eyes faintly amused. Natasha opens her mouth to ask what's going on, when a deep voice cuts over the quiet murmur in the dormitory. 

"Time to wake up, girls. Who is present?" Names begin sounding out down the row of beds. 

"It's a test," Natasha mutters. She feels more than sees Vika's tight nod. "But why bother to chain us? It's child's-play. Natalya!" She raises her voice for the last calls, followed quickly by Vika.

"Good," the man says. "Now, you're clever young ladies. You know what this means -- or you think you do. Today's challenge is different. Any girls found working together to complete it will be cut from the program." There's a loud scraping noise and a stifled cry of protest. Natasha and Vika lean up as far as they can, like every other girl in the row of beds, looking to where soldiers are dragging their dressers from the room. The speaker is a man in an officer's uniform, and he looks vaguely familiar. "The Project is moving to another location. Your task is to discover where it is now, and make your way there."

"It's winter!" Someone protests, a few beds up.

"The first ten arrivals will remain with the Program," the soldier continues, unperturbed. His voice is even, almost bored. "The stragglers will be cut. We will attempt to place you in appropriate living situations." He glances at his watch, nodding sharply at his men as they heave the last piece of furniture from the room. All that remains are the beds, blankets, and forty-two young women in nightgowns -- all that remains of the initial fifty. 

"We will be aware of  _ any _ cooperation. If you wish to remain with the program, you will make your own way. Combat is permitted. You begin... now." The man turns on his heel. Silence reigns for a long moment, broken only by his heavy steps echoing faintly from the hall. 

"What is that?" Someone mutters. Natasha hears the faint sound of skin rubbing against fabric. 

"Key!" Someone else cries. Natasha immediately rolls to her side to check beneath the bed, crashing into Vika as she does the same. After a brief scramble Vika raises her hand, bronze key pinched between thumb and finger. She pauses, meeting Natasha's eyes. The clatter of chains begins sounding throughout the room, intertwined with shouts and grunts and the sound of flesh hitting flesh and bare feet skittering across the floor.

Natasha closes her eyes and slams her head forward, ignoring Vika's startled cry of pain as she reaches for the key. 

Most of the girls turn left into the hall after freeing themselves; Natasha turns right, racing through empty rooms and cold corridors. In the kitchen she finds the paring knife she stashed behind the stove, and the barracks -- a long building she’s never dared to enter -- supply mismatched boots and a moth-eaten sweater. Counting under her breath, she returns to the main building and Irina Petrovna’s rooms. They are utterly barren, stripped of all the furniture and any hint of warmth. Only a curtain remains, torn at a slant. She can easily picture the soldiers yanking at it, clumsy in their haste. She pulls it the rest of the way down and rips it fully in half, wrapping the pieces around her feet before stuffing them into the oversized boots and pulling on the sweater.

It’s little enough, but the hint of warmth gives her room to think. Irina Petrovna’s window is wide, and shows the whole of the compound and much beyond; from it, she can see the pale figures of teenage girls moving across snow-dusted hills and into the forest. There is no way to tell how far away the Project has moved, but the soldiers were moving furniture, and that meant vehicles. Tracks to follow.

Three days later, Natasha has blisters on her feet, the first hint of frostnip in her fingers, and a very good idea of where to go. She slips from the barn she slept in with a rough blanket pulled tight around her, leaving the small village with the first touch of pink in the sky. Her path leads her towards the mountains, a chill breeze stealing away her warmth with every step. She hugs the eastern side as long as she can, relishing what little warmth the sun provides, stepping carefully along icy ground. True snow awaits her in the heights, where she’ll have to use the leather snow-shoes strapped to her back. So intent is she on navigating the cold, rocky ground, that she fails to notice the other girl until she’s little more than a few yards away.

“You’ve had good luck, Natalya. I almost didn’t recognize you. How did you make your hair so brown?”

Natasha has her small knife halfway out before she realizes it, shifting into a defensive crouch. She has to squint into the sun, but she recognizes the lanky girl before her.

“Lilia,” she replies with a cautious nod. “Skill, not luck, and I don’t want to know how much talk is cooperation. Go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

Lilia steps closer, shifting from foot to foot. Natasha doesn’t move. The girl’s hands are raw, and her face burnt; from the cold, or the sun. Her tongue darts out to lick at chapped lips, and Natasha feels a surge of pity as she takes in the faintly hollow cheeks and a faint tremble in her birdlike arms.

“I think I’ll go your way, instead,” Lilia says. Her grin is surely intended for intimidation, but it pulls against her teeth into a grimace of pain. Natasha thinks about the bread and hard cheese in her bag, pictures herself dropping it and running. They’re at least a week out, making good time, but the food she has would keep Lilia for a day or two at best, and Natasha can hardly spare the time to hunt for more.

And besides, she doesn’t care to find out exactly  _ how _ cooperation will be punished. She’s seen what happens for far more minor infractions. 

“No,” Natasha says, and launches from her crouch into a dead run. She’s strong, and not starving; all she needs to do is  last . But Lilia’s legs are far longer, and she crashes into Natasha’s side only a few moments later. They tumble for a moment. Natasha lashes out with sharp kicks, but the other girl holds fast, fingers digging into Natasha’s wrist until she lets the knife go with a grunt of pain.

They break apart and scrabble for the weapon almost as one, like a dance. Lilia reaches it first, backing quickly away. The sun is in her eyes, but Natasha’s back is to the cliff.

“Go, Lilia,” she whispers. “I don’t want to do this.” 

“Do you think I care? What else do you think we’re  _ supposed _ to do?” The taller girl lunges, and Natasha darts to the side and scoops up a handful of icy dirt as she turns. Lilia only stumbles for a moment, spinning on her heel and charging back. Her momentum carries her forward through the dirt Natasha flings into her face, though she yelps and flinches as it strikes her eyes. Lilia’s hands land on Natasha before she can back away, groping blindly towards the strap across her chest. 

For a moment, the world seems to double; memory lays itself over the present like a blanket of morning fog. Laughter in a mirror-walled room, learning lifts on a warm summer day. The tallest girls had done the lifting, and Natasha remembers the girl in front of her coaxing her forward.  _ Don’t be afraid, Natalya; I won’t drop you ! _

Natasha closes her eyes and wraps her hands around Lilia’s arms, lifting herself up using her opponent’s height and slamming her feet into her stomach. Something gives. She doesn’t open them when the other girl cries out and her grip falters, bouncing back up the moment her feet touch the ground and kicking again, and again. She keeps them closed even when Lilia wrenches free and flings Natasha to the side, tumbling off the cliff.

For a moment, Natasha welcomes the fall.

The moment ends when her descent does, crashing into a rocky outcropping. Her arm bends painfully beneath her and her teeth cut into her lips. Only luck keeps her head from striking stone. She lays there for a long moment, senses dulled in pain. The sight that greets her when she opens her eyes leaves her heart sinking, and she grudgingly rolls to her knees. Her arm throbs in time with her heartbeat as she stares up at ten feet of sheer cliff. Shuffling to the edge of the jut of rock shows her the same view, falling in the other direction.

“Fuck,” she whimpers. 

The sun has begun to dip past the mountaintop by the time she heaves herself, shaking and sweating, over the edge. Everything hurts when she lands and she wants nothing more than to lay down and sleep, but her damp skin is already growing cold. She forces herself up onto unsteady feet, pulling the blanket tight and moving forward. 

Her foot strikes something that goes skittering along the ground, and she glances down, eyes wide. Her knife lies a few feet away. She glances up, but of course Lilia is long gone; Natasha would be, too. She picks up the knife, pain and exhaustion forcing her into slow and considered movements. The knife is cold in her palm, but she grips it tightly as she continues up the mountain with determined steps.

The expected week becomes eight days. The first few are little more than unpleasant. The cold stings, but she manages to trap two rabbits, and find a squirrel’s hoard: a handful of withered berries, a few nuts, and pine-seeds. The rabbit furs she scrapes clean of blood and tucks into her boots, while the food she carries in a pouch improvised from twisting and tying a corner of the blanket. She forces herself to ration them. At least the snow provides her with water, however cold; without a waterskin she can only scoop sparing handfuls, holding it in her mouth until it melts. It’s not enough, but thirst will kill her as surely as cold.

On the fourth day a storm blows against the mountain. Natasha sees it only moments before the wind strikes her like a slap. She leans into it, struggling to regain her path, but with every step the wind blows harder, as if it taunts her. One particularly hard gust knocks her into a tree. The rough bark scrapes against her cheek and she cries out, slamming her hand against the wood. Part of her screams to give up. It’s the same part that dreams the smell of pine-dust in the air and flinches at the smell of apples, and she forces herself to ignore it. Instead she edges around until the tree blocks the greater portion of the wind and digs into the snow at the base of it, curling tightly into the small hollow she creates and pulling the rough brown blanket tight against her.

The muffled wind echoes the slow beat of her heart, a shivering lullabye. When her eyes drift closed, a nagging voice in the back of her mind forces them open again. She wants nothing more to sleep away the cold and ache and the strange pressing feeling in her chest, but no,  _ sleep is dangerous _ , that voice says.

The storm rages for an eternity. Natasha tries to count the minutes, the hours, but her mind wanders too easily. She eats the last of the nuts and berries, then curls her fingers into a fist and shoves her hands beneath her body so she won’t reach for the seeds as well.  _ I will survive _ _,_ she thinks.  _ I will need food _ . 

The wind is gone for a long time before she notices the silence. She’s buried by the snow, but it’s light, and easy enough to burrow through. The sight that greets her as she crawls around the tree and into the open stills her breath in her throat.

The world  _ glitters _ , everything shades of white and blue and ice. The trees are dusted in snow, the sky cloudless and pale, the cold as sharp as any she’s ever known. It’s beautiful, and even as she despairs at the journey left to make, her heart sings for the sight before her eyes.


	11. Chapter 11

Clint finds her hours later, curled on her bed in the dark, watching data flicker across the screen of a Starkpad.

“Heard you pissed off the avatar of America,” he says, slouching in the doorway. “Does this mean I can’t have apple pie and freedom fries anymore?”

Natasha doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look up, waiting for some bit of information to catch her eye. JARVIS is doing the same, and probably a better job of it, but the thought of leaving this to someone else makes her stomach lurch. Some faraway part of her brain tracks Clint’s approach out of long habit. That same habit eases the tension in her shoulders, just a hint, when he slides onto the bed and settles his arm behind her, smelling of dust and blood and sweat. She inhales deeply, and the tension eases a little more.

"You need a break, Nat," he says, voice low in her ear. "Stop. Eat something. Sleep. A couple of hours isn't going to change things."

"I can't," she says, helpless to stop the faint tremble in her words. It wouldn't have mattered; Clint has always seen through her, from the very beginning. "I can't stop. I have to find--"

He reaches over and pulls the tablet from her grasp. She makes a frustrated noise and slides her legs from the bed, back to him, like a sulking child.

"You're going in circles. Eat now, sleep now, find the Red Room later."

Something aches behind her eyes, along her jaw. She has to clench her teeth to keep an explanation from spilling out, and waits for him to ask. No lies, she tells herself. If others have the truth -- Clint deserves it too.

She can feel the very air against her skin for a long, tense moment. Then there’s the soft _whumph_ of the tablet dropping to the bed, and his calloused hands reach out to gather her hair from the nape of her neck. He leans in and presses his lips to the top of her spine, resting his weight against her in silent comfort. Natasha breathes in his scent again, deep and even breaths, letting her eyes drift closed.

“I--”

“No.” He cuts her off immediately, breath warm against her neck, but his voice is thick with affection. “No, Nat. Don’t get me wrong: when this is over, we’re going to have a _really long talk_ , and I have the feeling I’m not going to like it much. But it’s not over yet, and we’ve got work to do. And I have a really important question for you.”

He falls silent, and Natasha can’t stop her lips curling up into an unwilling smile. “What?”

“Why do you smell like you went a few rounds with a teenybopper? Did you bust a Hello Kitty cartel?”

Nat snorts, rolling her eyes and pushing back into him until he loses his balance and goes sprawling across the bed.

“Fine,” she says, “food. Did you bring some, or did you just come to goad me into feeding _you_?”

“You cook better and I’m tired of pizza.”

Nat rolls her eyes again and stands, tapping his foot lightly before wandering towards the kitchen. She’s carefully slicing onions for chicken bastilla when Clint follows, barefoot, his eyes trained on the tablet as he steps into the living-room.

“Nat, you- ok, I said eat, why are you making something that takes a thousand years?”

“I like it,” she responds, flipping her hair at him. “Repetitive motion can be soothing.”

“I’ll give you repetitive motion,” he mutters beneath his breath. She can see the smirk twitch at his lips before his face grows serious again. “I think you missed something here, Nat.”

A chill rolls up her spine. Her hands keep moving, methodical.

“You’re looking for where they _are_ ,” he continues, coming around the corner and setting the tablet on the counter. Her notes slide across the screen, files and pictures and leads. A few rapid taps of his fingers and it shifts, the data is replaced.

Faces of girls, young -- _so_ young -- missing, presumed dead, families killed, girls sold and left and stolen. For a moment the pictures swim in her vision, overlaid with the faint image of two bodies on a wooden floor, someone carrying her away and she doesn’t want to go--

The knife drops to the counter. She turns, sucking in a gasping breath.

“You follow a trail from the beginning, Nat. If the Red Room’s operating, it’s getting girls. _Where_ is it getting girls?”

Her eyes sting. She can’t catch her breath. Obvious, it’s so _obvious_ \--

“Hey, hey.” Clint’s in front of her, and she didn’t notice him move. Russian curses spill from her mouth, hot tears from her eyes. “There we go. Even Natashas have to have emotions sometimes.” She lets him pull her into his arms, doesn’t resist when he hooks an arm beneath her legs and carries her back to the bed.


	12. Chapter 12

**Russia**

**1937**

 

The blanket of snow does much to disguise the mountain’s trails, but she finds them still, limping atop powder snow on half-broken snow-shoes. She follows the signs without remembering them, more intent on the way leaves sing in the breeze. Hunger claws at her belly now and again, but she shushes it until it slinks back into the shadows.

She finds a long stone wall, curving and curving, and follows it for a while, until the whisper of the wind becomes the babble of voices. Voices, she must listen to voices, because information is important; but she can’t quite make out what they say. She tries to offer a smile, to be small and unthreatening, but the world is strange and she seems to have lost her shoes, and the hunger is no longer willing to go away.

When she wakes-- and when had she slept? The memory slides away like an eel-- she is in a small room, the scent of antiseptic at odds with the dark wood that lines the walls. Her clothes have been replaced by a new gown of pristine white, and her fingers and feet are bandaged. Natasha turns her head carefully, slowly, something telling her that sharp movements would feel very unpleasant just at the moment. The room is utterly unfamiliar, and yet--

She exhales softly, closing her eyes to listen. There is a murmur of noise, the soft sound of many tired voices, in a cadence that is intimately familiar. Something eases in her chest, a fear she hadn’t recognized until it was gone.

“I made it,” she murmurs, and winces at the rough cracks in her voice. Her throat rasps with the need for water, and after a moment of concentration she swings her legs over the side of the bed, flinching as her feet brush the cool floor. It is not the worst pain she’s ever felt, but she still has to brace herself to stand up on unsteady legs. Her stomach lurches as she does, and for a moment all she can feel is a wave of nausea, before it sharpens into a pang of hunger that propels her from the room.

The heavy door swings open into a long hallway, paneled in muted green wallpaper and the same dark wood. Pale squares line the hall, where paintings or hangings must have once rested. Nothing hangs from the walls now, and she turns left to follow the spill of voices. She comes out on a balcony above a large room, as big as any one building in the compound. She braces on the railing and looks down, counting the familiar faces. It’s laid out much like the dining room had always been, with a large table nearest the fireplace, and smaller ones lined up beyond.

She counts twenty-one girls before the smell of food hits her, and she follows it around the corner and down a wide set of stairs as if pulled by a string. The chatter quiets as she drifts into the room, before being replaced by smiles and quiet cheers.

“Nastasya lives!” Someone yells, a voice she can’t put a name to with her head fuzzy with hunger.

“She does,” a low rumble comes from beside her. She glances over, somehow surprised to see Achille here, though she doesn’t know why. “Good morning, _principessa_. Awake sooner than they said. Go eat, eh?”

She ignores his suggestion, drifting closer, fingers trailing along the peeling wallpaper. “What are you doing?” He holds several slips of paper in his hand, and pulls another down from the wall as she watches. Hers remains up, with a red ribbon pinned to it. She counts nine others marked the same, and twenty-six marked with gray ones; swallows past the surge of hope that tightens her throat.  

“Ah, time is to move on,” he says, taking down another name. “Two weeks gone, _bella_ , anyone out in the cold now… eh, not so good for them. Too cold, yeah?”

“Are the ribbons -- they must be -- ten ribbons. I made it. ... Wait.” She blinks, turning to look at him directly. “Who isn’t here? You can’t just leave them out there to die!”

Achille has the grace to look ashamed, but it doesn’t stop the half-hearted shrug he gives her. “Is it right, _principessa_ ? No. But _domina_ Aliyeva says stop waiting, says no men to go looking.” He pats her on the shoulder, clumsy as he never is when teaching. “Only eight girls, though, not so bad. Will be a speech, nice ceremony.”

Natasha shrugs his shoulder off, brow furrowed as she backs away. “ _Not so bad_?” She lunges forward and grabs the slips from his hand, and the last unmarked one from the wall. He’s surprised enough to let her do it. She spins on heel, ignoring the pain that accompanies it, and scans the room. There’s no order to the tables, not like there used to be, but her searching gaze quickly finds the faces she wants. She ignores Achille sputtering behind her and stalks to a table halfway across the room, where a bright blonde head is tipped against a sunset-red one, dropping into the chair across from them. She lets the slips of paper flutter to the table as the girls raise their heads almost as one.

“Natasha,” Sofia says, tugging her golden braid over her shoulder and leaning back to stare at the ceiling. “Quite the entrance you made.”

“She means when you got here,” Anya says. “Although wandering into breakfast like a ghost is also dramatic.”

Natasha ignores them with years of practice. “Look at these names.”

Anya leans forward, pulling one from the pile, then another. She looks back up with an arched eyebrow. “The girls who have not come in yet. So?”

“So,” Natasha says through gritted teeth, “they plan to leave them out there.”

Sofia straightens so quickly Natasha can practically hear the air around her whistle. “What?”

“The girls who don’t find their way. They’re leaving them.”

Anya is still picking through the papers on the table, arranging all seven in a line. “And, so? We go save the weak girls? Our names were marked in red, Natasha. Yours, too. We go on. How reckless do you think we are?”

“As reckless as climbing a rooftop in a rainstorm,” Natasha snaps. “Was that for a better cause? As reckless as letting Mila fall to her death.”

Sofia closes her eyes as Anya’s go wide, a muscle jumping in her cheek. Despite the circumstances, Natasha flushes hot with success. The weak point, found; now she has only to press her thumb into it like an overripe fruit.

“That was not our fault,” Sofia says, low. “They shouldn’t have followed if they couldn’t climb.”

“You could climb, though. The both of you. You could have helped.”

“Fine,” Anya snarls. “Fine,” she says again, and her face smooths as she blinks back tears. Natasha knows the taste of victory, and lays her hand over Anya’s, slips forgotten beneath her fingers.

“We’ll demand they let us search,” Natasha says with a decisive nod, “and if they say no… if they tell us no, we go anyway.” She keeps her eyes on them as they shift uncomfortably, before Anya and then Sofia return her nod with resolve written across their faces and push away from the table.

Natasha closed her eyes and let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, arms dropping limply to her sides. She pressed her thumb against the slip of paper still crumpled in her right hand, _Vika_ written across its face.


	13. Chapter 13

Her suite is empty. She can feel it in an instant, when she wakes; Clint’s scent lingers on the pillow beside her, but she’s alone. Her StarkPad is tossed carelessly onto the comforter; its soft, insistent beeping is what woke her.

“Miss,” JARVIS says as she reaches for it. Natasha pauses, arching an eyebrow. “I feel it prudent to inform you that Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes have been denied access to this floor.”

“...hmm.” She glances at the tablet, fallen silent while JARVIS spoke. A moment later it starts up again. “Thank you. I appreciate the information.” She takes a deep breath and swipes a finger across the screen.

Steve’s face is drawn, faint darkness beneath his eyes. Some small, vicious part of her cheers at the sight. 

“Romanoff,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Nat. I…”

Nat pulls her knees to her chest as he trails off. She could say something. She could say a great many things, with as many different effects. She remains silent instead, tracing idle patterns on her leg. 

"I need to understand," he says, finally. "I want to trust you. I want to trust you so badly, but I don't really know anything about you."

"More than you think," she says, barely a whisper. 

"I don't want this, Nat. I need you to tell me the truth. All of it. I don't mean brush me off with half-truths. I need to know what I'm dealing with."

"And then?"

"And then... I really hope we're still on the same side."

Nat takes a deep breath. 

“When I was very young,” she begins, “a soldier came to my home…”

Steve listens, silent. It takes a long time to tell, the whole of it, or what she is willing to release; the truth claws at her heart, desperate to hide and equally desperate to be let out. She moves to the kitchen midway through, so she can drink to cool her dry and aching throat, replace the tears that threaten. 

“...I guess I don’t have to tell you about that part,” she trails off when she comes to the war.

“...yeah,” he says. She’s not looking at the tablet but she can picture his face easily, caught between sympathy and the dregs of his anger. “I’d say my memories of that are pretty clear. Natasha. This is the truth, right?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“Don’t-”

“It’s the truth.” She pulls the StarkPad close, tipping it up so he can see her face. “All of it. A lot more than anyone else has ever known about me.”

“You gave us the intel that put us on that train.”

“...you wanted Zola. Zola was on the train. I didn’t-- I think they knew I was giving you information.”

“You had to know--” Steve makes a strangled, frustrated noise. “...so tell me,” he says, after a long, long pause, “about what happened after the war, Natasha.”

“You mean about  _ him _ ,” she says, swallowing hard. She can hear the bitterness in her voice, is appalled at her own lack of control.

“Yes.”

She can see that he is  _ trying  _ not to judge her. That he is willing, at least, to hear her out. So she takes a breath, and another, smoothing over the cracks in her mind by force of will.

“Peggy recruited me in 1975,” she says, as if reciting facts unrelated to her. She closes her eyes when Steve draws a breath, and continues to forestall the question. “Yes, I’ve been with SHIELD twice. In ‘85 she sent me to take down what remained of the Red Room. Dying scraps of it, we thought. I knew something was wrong with SHIELD, but… we didn’t realize, back then. We didn’t think it was still Hydra.”

She pauses, sips at her water, thoughtful. “That’s when I met the Winter Soldier, Steve. That’s when I saw what they’d made of the man who was once a friend.”

“What they’d  _ made  _ of him?” Steve looks at her oddly for the phrasing.

“Forty  _ years  _ they’d had him. Forty years to tear him down and build him back up again into someone who was barely human any more.” Tears well again in her eyes at the memory. “I didn’t know. I thought you were both dead. I had to go back into that place, be their little perfect soldier again, train all those poor girls-- and I came face to face with him, Steve. There was nothing there.  _ Nothing _ _._ A machine that followed orders.”

“That’s obviously not true!” 

“I know that  _ now _ !” The glass has cracked in her grip. She sets it down, gently, and takes another steadying breath. “Back then-- Steve, I thought he was as good as dead. I thought Barnes was  _ gone _ , and the Winter Soldier would have killed me if I’d tried to put down his body. I was there for two years, and I thought--” Curses fell from her mouth in snarled Russian. “I thought I’d destroyed it. I shot that vile woman in the head, I should have let her suffer but I-- I--” She starts laughing, a hysterical sobbing sound. “Cut off one head. I cut off one head and I should have known, Steve, I  _ knew  _ she went digging for any funding she could get her hands on and it was  _ Erskine _ she ended up with, I should have  _ known _ Hydra would end up connected somehow.”

“No.” His voice is soft, softer than she deserves. “No, Nat. What she did to you-- to all of you-- how could you know?” 

Bucky’s low voice mutters in the background, and Natasha goes still. Her skin prickles.

“...has he been listening the whole time?” Her voice come out soft, plaintive.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. There's still a sharp edge to his tone, but the hatred is dulled. Silence drags on for long seconds before he continues. “Not sure I believe all of it. ...but maybe I don’t remember all of what I think I do so well, it turns out.” 

“Stark’s had a medical team running tests,” Steve says. “Whatever they did to wipe him… the serum heals it, but it’s going to take a long time to get everything back. And some of it… some of it… maybe never.”

“Oh,” Nat says, still quiet. Steve must hear the warning in her voice, this time; his blue eyes go wide. She stares him down through the screen, leaning on the counter, her posture relaxed. "You know, for someone who's been talking about trust, you don't seem to have given a moment's thought to  _ mine _ ."

"He deserved to hear it too!" His voice is defensive, a thread of hurt in in.

"Maybe. I suppose I didn't deserve to be asked?"

“It concerns him too,” Steve insisted, jaw gone stiff.

“Nick was wrong,” Nat said after a moment, coldly. “It’s not me who needs to learn to trust my teammates.”

“I tru-” Steve began, before realizing how ridiculous it would be right now.

There is a long pause while she stares at him, and his struggle between loyalties plays out on his face. She doesn’t like where his thoughts seem to end up. “So how can  _ I _ ?” she asks him in response, her voice like ice; trying to convey just how much damage he’s just done.

She’s almost grateful when Stark’s voice interrupts the growing silence.

“ _ Sorry to butt into storytime, kids, but JARVIS did some follow-up on Clint’s ideas… and we may have a lead on your little spider problem. Medical’s cleared Barnes, psych and physical both; you think you can all play nice together if you come up to the labs? ” _

Steve and Bucky assent so quickly their voices blur together. Natasha waits a long moment, lips curving into a sharp smile as she murmurs: “Shouldn’t be a problem.”


	14. Chapter 14

It’s another day before they start out, bags heavy with supplies: food, rope, salve for frostbite. Their meeting with Irina Petrovna replays in Natasha’s thoughts as she follows the careful trail Sofia leads. 

_ “Of course,” she said, voice soft, eyes wide, sending a shiver of suspicion up Natasha’s spine. “Our soldiers have been reassigned, my dears, we can spare none for the effort. But your new training begins in a week. If you can return before then… I see no reason why you should not search for survivors.”  _

_ She leaned forward, cupping Natasha’s cheek, and Anya’s, a fond smile touching her lips before she released them and gave Sofia’s braid a gentle tug. “You may not like what you find. Have you considered that?” _

_ “Yes.” Natasha bit the word out, afire with yearning to just  _ go _. Sofia and Anya made gentler noises of assent. _

_ “Well. I could hardly stop you, even if I wished. You may take what supplies you feel necessary.” She leaned back and turned aside, reaching for her tea. An obvious dismissal.  _

_ “If you don’t return within the week,” she continued, before Natasha stepped out the open door of her office, “We will be obliged to cut you from the program.” _

The thought is her constant companion through the days that follow, as close as the cold that seeps back into her bones, into her very soul, as if it never left. The cold is a never-ending physical pain, despite the warm clothing they have taken with them, and though they brought plenty of food for a week’s journey, Natasha is still ill and has trouble making herself eat it. 

She’s glad for that though, when they find the body, frozen like an animal in the snow. That’s what they think it is at first, when Sofia calls out in the soft light of the third morning. A doe, perhaps, tawny against the linen-white of the snow. Meat freezes easily in the cold of winter, and a supplement to their carefully-rationed stores would be no bad thing. They’re nearly atop it when Natasha spies the glint of blonde hair.

“Stop,” she says, but it’s weak, the barest rasp of air. She clears her throat, stomach lurching as the sight before her becomes clear. “ _ Stop! ” _

Sofia and Anya, distracted, heads tilted together in quiet conversation, slow their steps and turn, surprised. “Natalya?”

“Stop,” she says again. Her mouth works but she can’t seem to say more, so she points, the muscles of her arm clenched to stop the tremor that wants to shiver down it. Sofia turns first, Anya still paused mid-step, brow wrinkled in concern.

For a moment, Natasha doesn’t understand the noise. It starts low, a hoarse groan that rises in pitch until Sofia is shrieking,  _ no no no _ . The knife slips from her fingers. She tumbles to her knees, slipping through Anya’s reaching hands.

Natasha forces her unwilling limbs forward. Half her mind screams, knowing what she’ll see, already adding to the cast of her nightmares. The rest is coldly grateful: it’s not  _ her _ dead on a godforsaken mountainside.

“Hush,” Anya is saying, kneeling beside her friend. “Sofia, don’t cry.”

Natasha forces herself to breathe, the cold air sharp in her lungs. She steps forward again. She doesn’t have to force herself any longer; she’s drawn forward against her better judgement to kneel beside Lilia’s body. It’s half-buried in snow, and she has to scoop away heaping handfuls of it to see. After a moment’s work Lilia is laid bare. Sofia sobs louder, and Anya cants a narrow-eyed look at Natasha with a disgusted  _ tch _ . Natasha can hear her thought as clear as day: let the poor girl rest in peace.

Natasha can’t.

Lilia’s face is frozen in a terrible expression, traces of blood around her mouth and chin. Her fingers grip the stolen sack as though it were a lifeline; the thin fabric tears when Natasha tries to pull it from her rigid fingers. She jerks it loose and spills its contents to the ground, frowning in confusion. Little is missing. She glances back at Lilia’s face, heart tripping in her chest as she realizes the girl couldn’t have died of hunger. 

She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, trying to remember meeting Lilia on the mountain. Her memories are strange, tilted, hazy through the film of hunger and snow-madness that followed, but she remembers-- remembers-- 

With a shudder, Natasha opens her eyes and reaches for the hem of Lilia’s nightgown, pulling it up past too-loose, blood-stained trousers, until her stomach is bared. Bruises mar her pale skin, at the bottom of the ribs. Across the front of her swollen belly is a mark that might be the shape of a foot. Two feet. Slammed against it, again and again.

Natasha scrambles backward, turning and retching into the snow.

“We should move on,” Anya mutters, voice wavering. Sofia shoves her away, another low sob erupting from her throat.

“We should  _ bury _ her!”

“We won’t have time, Sonechka. Let the snow do it for us.” Anya strokes the long curve of Sofia’s braid as Natasha struggles to her feet, wiping her mouth and staggering towards them. 

“No,” Natasha whispers, laying a gentle hand on Sofia’s shoulder. She leans against Anya, ignoring the other girl’s inquiringly arched eyebrow. “We can spare a moment. She doesn’t deserve this.”

They adorn her in pine-boughs and stones dug from snow-covered ground. Sweat beads, then freezes on their brows, but no one complains. The sun is high in the cloudless sky when they finish, casting everything in sharp relief.

Anya begins pushing a quiet and listless Sofia on down the mountain the moment it’s done, but Natasha lingers until they’re yards away.

“I…” She crouches, blinking rapidly. Clears her throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-- ...It’s not worth much, is it?” One finger traces idle designs in the snow for a moment, before she stands and strides away.

Something sharp-edged lingers in her heart. She takes note of the sensation as she catches up to the other girls, tucking the shape of it away in her mind, and then ignoring it entirely. It is, after all, not her who’s dead on a mountain. 

Early in the morning of their last day of searching, with the sun casting weak light over the snowy mountain, Natasha spies a dark shape that’s out of place by a tree in front of her. She approaches it slowly. At first she’d taken it for a rock, sheltered from snow beneath the massive pine, but as she neared it shivered and coughed.

She’d felt a flutter of hope when they found the first living girl, Danka, still slogging through the snow on makeshift crutches, screaming for help in response to Anya’s desperate calls of “ _ is anyone out here?! _ ”. Then another, Eva, who’d gone the wrong way but realized her error too late. Sofia and Anya had taken them up the mountain, both girls weak enough that sending them on their own could easily have been a death sentence.

That same flutter beats with weak wings in her chest as she steps closer to the figure. She tries to brace herself. It’s not Vika. Or it is, and she’s injured. Near death. She pictures it as she moves closer, as vivid as she can make it, letting the sharp jags of despair suffuse her before tucking it away in the back of her mind. What’s she’s ready for won’t hurt. ....It  _ won’t _ .

“Vika?” she calls softly.

The figure shifts and then, very quietly, whispers, “N’tasha?”

Her body floods with relief and she staggers the last few feet to collapse in front of her friend. She touches everywhere she can see, feeling for a pulse, for frostbite, for blood, for anything; but Vika is unharmed. She whimpers as Natasha pulls her to her chest, and then after a few seconds she starts to let out tiny sobs.

“I found you,” Natasha says, over and over. She chafes her hands against Vika’s back, holding her close in the hopes of sharing warmth, though it feels as though her friend’s body is leaching every ounce of warmth and growing no warmer herself. “I found you, my love, you’ll be all right. Can you walk?”

Vike presses her face against Natasha’s neck and makes a faint noise. Natasha takes it for assent and tightens her arms around Vika before pushing to her feet. Vika shivers against her, teeth near rattling with the force of it, but when Natasha takes a step, so does she.

They crest the last ridge before the chateau as the sun touches the horizon. Natasha’s body aches with half-carrying Vika, though not nearly as much as her soul does at the constant whispered apology.

“Hush,” she says, as she has a hundred times. “Hush, Vika. Almost home, hey?” It’s strange to come into the courtyard. She can’t remember seeing it, the first time. Sofia and Anya stand with Danka and Eva, and a tall man in uniform, at the left side of the property where a barn has been converted to hold cars. 

Halfway to them, she slows, brows knitting in confusion. Danka and Eva kneel, and time seems to slow as the soldier-- the one who’d set them the challenge, in the compound-- pulls his sidearm and aims between Danka’s eyes.

_ No _ , Natasha tries to say, but her throat freezes, torn between horror and disbelief. Her eyes train on his finger as he pulls the trigger, slow, and the shot cracks in the twilight like a cannon.

She hears a sob, distant. Anya turns her head away, red curls falling into her eyes. Natasha is frozen. Vika is the same beside her, a quiet whine building in her throat. The soldier’s arm moves, slow, and for a moment everything is strange and silent and surreal--

The gun cracks again, and Eva slumps to the ground.

“Good of you to join us,” the man says, in that strangely familiar voice. “We were wondering where you’d got to, little tsarina.”

He strolls towards them, a pleasant expression on his face, stopping a few feet away and squaring up, raising his gun to point right into Vika’s face.

“Welcome back.”

“Wait!” Natasha flings herself between Vika and the gun, holding up her hands pleadingly. “Please-- wait-- she made it to the mountain! She isn’t top ten, but she can still be useful to you!”

“She made it to the mountain to die. We have no need to train cannon fodder.”

“No, she made it to the mountain to serve her country,” Natasha pleads. “Don’t waste that!.”

“Hmm,” the soldier rasps, peering between Natasha and Vika for several long moments before lowering the gun and holstering it. “Very well. Perhaps she can be of use.” He leans forward and grabs Vika by the wrist, pulling her ungently to him. “Best take your friends inside, little mouse. This is your last day, I think, and the sun is nearly set.”


	15. Chapter 15

Steve and Bucky are there already when she steps into Tony's lab. She pauses in the doorway, glancing at the three men before her. Tony's body screams tension, Steve's stifled frustration; Barnes is all wary submission. 

"...don't worry about it," Tony finally says, relaxing his white-knuckled grip on a pen. "It wasn't your fault."

"But-"

"Oh look, it's Natalie. Please come in here so I don't have to talk about this anymore." He picks up a tablet from the table behind him without turning to look, and wiggles it in her direction. Natasha takes it, ignoring the other two men. 

"This is accurate?"

"JARVIS  _ is _ pretty good at what he does."

Natasha sighs, the sweet feeling of focus, of a  _ target _ , drawing just a touch of anxiety from her shoulders. "So we know where they are."

"We know where to start looking. Not to put a damper on the mood, but do we have a plan for  _ after _ we rescue a bunch of tween proto-ssassins?"

"We?" Natasha asks, a smile lurking at the edges of her mouth.

Steve shifts. "They should go home, to their fam-"

"They don't have families, Captain," she says, letting acid seep into her tone. "Their families are dead, and if they do have anyone left, they won't know how to go back. These girls aren't going to be children anymore. It's changed from they way I was trained- but it's still brutal. Ask  _ him _ ." 

Barnes's head jerks up, eyes wide like a spooked horse. Everything about him in that instant is so directly opposite to his mannerisms in the observation room that Natasha mentally curses the doctors that approved his release from holding.

“I- don’t remember,” he mutters. Natasha glances at Steve, taking in his downcast eyes and lips pressed tight together, before arching an eyebrow at Tony’s equally skeptical expression. 

“...so what I’m hearing here,” Tony says after the silence stretches uncomfortably taut, “is we should have a medical team standing by when we do this?”

Natasha nods, tapping a location on the tablet. “If this is accurate-”

“Which it  _ is -” _

“Hush, Stark. If this is accurate, if the patterns are right, this is the main site. They’ll start training here.”

“All right. So. J! Start putting together medical teams, let’s get this show on the road. ETA?”

“Approximately 22 hours, sir.”

“All right. Then… everybody get some rest, I guess? I don’t know. Do whatever it is super-soldiers do. Don’t break my building.”

Steve and Bucky leave immediately, practically scrambling for the door; it would be amusing if not for everything else going on.

Natasha lingers, silent, until Tony turns to her with pursed lips and a glint in his eye. “Something you need?”

His leer is half-hearted at best, and she just sighs in response, bumping her shoulder gently against his. He grumbles, but a smile lurks at the corner of his lips.

She doesn’t say  _ thank you  _ before she leaves, but she doesn’t need to.

The wait to depart is almost physically painful. Natasha prepares her gear for the mission, then checks it again. Rereads the briefing-- in-depth, cohesive, and with surprisingly helpful suggestions littered throughout; every time she interacts with JARVIS or something he's made, she's more grateful for him.

Maybe she's too efficient for her own good, since all of that takes until mid-day, leaving sixteen hours until a medical team is assembled and prepared. Too much time to spend sleeping, not that she thinks she can sleep at all. Too many sharp-edged things are tangled in her mind. 

There's only one she can do anything about, so she does. Steve is a man of habits; she finds him in the biggest gym, directly below the lowest floor of suites. He pauses for a moment when she pushes the door open, bright blue eyes flickering over her face before he turns back to his punching bag. She skirts behind him, settling to a mat and taking her time stretching, watching as his shoulders hitch higher and his neck becomes tenser with every blow he lands, until one finally sends the bag flying off its chains.

“How much do you think Stark budgets for that?” She laces her voice with laughter, a touch of mockery.

“There a reason you’re in here, Romanoff?”

Instead of responding, she rolls to her feet and moves in front of him, dropping into a boxing stance.

“No,” he says. “Nat. I’m not going to fight you.”

“Why not?” she asks lightly. “You won’t fight beside me. Are we still on the same team, Captain?”

“I’m-”

She darts forward, fist striking his chin with a  _ crack _ . He stumbles backwards, hands flung up before him.

“Give me truth if nothing else.”

“That’s rich, coming from you!” His eyes snap with sudden rage. She welcomes it: it’s honest, a true emotion, something she needs from him right now.

“So tell me. I gave you mine. What about yours?” She kicks out, aiming for the side of his knee, but he’s half-expecting it this time, moves back with easy grace - and returns the blow. It grazes her shoulder when she’s not quite quick enough to dance away.

“What  _ about _ mine?” He backs away. “I’ve never lied to you!”

“Oh,” she says, mimicking his loose-limbed stance, “do we not count lies of omission, then?”

“I- look, I don’t want to fight, Nat, I don’t want to  _ hurt _ you-”

“Liar!” She punctuates it with movement, darting in and landing a kick before he can block. He hooks a hand beneath her thigh and yanks, and she goes down hard on her back.

“I  _ don’t! _ ” He dodges the punches she makes as she bounces back to her feet, deflecting each blow with more force than it requires. “I want to  _ trust _ you, I want to  _ believe _ you, I want my friend back!” He shoves her away, stumbling back himself with the force of it. He’s panting, teeth gritted, expression raw and open.  _ He’s _ open, wide open, she could hurt him badly-

She acknowledges the thought, and tucks it away in a box in her heart.

“So do I.” Her voice is too smooth, it sounds like a lie, but she’s done her crying, she’s finished with pain; there’s no time for it, not now. “I want to trust you. I want  _ everything _ to be different, Steve, but that’s not going to happen. We don’t get back the past, we build the future. Or we break it. And this,” she gestures between them, “is broken, and that’s not all on me.”

“...no. It’s not.” Steve sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Everything’s so… I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Do you think you’re the only one who feels this way?” Her expression is curious. Calm, far more more so than the emotions still roiling inside her. “It’s all fucked up, Steve. Everything. The Red Room, Hydra, they’re good at this. At fucking you up long after you thought you were free of them.”

He barks a short, surprised laugh. “Ain’t that the truth.”

They watch each other warily. Silently. Steve moves forward, feints a strike at her face. She grabs his wrist and twists; shaking her head. “Don’t insult me.”

From flat on his back on the floor, his smile looks more real in the instant before he sweeps her feet from under her. But he makes no effort to get up, instead lies there on the mat, looking across at her.

“Which one is the real Natasha?” His tone is only curious, now. No anger left in him.

“I’m still trying to figure that out myself,” she finally confesses.

He smiles properly, then, that blue-eyed white-toothed smile that she thought looked like sunshine the very first time she met him. “I think I like most of the Natashas I’ve met.”

“I wish I did.”

Steve doesn’t offer her platitudes. Only nods before pushing himself to his feet easily and nodding down at her. “We all feel like that. Every day. That’s probably the most normal thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“I don’t know how to... I don’t know what normal really is.”

“So join the club.” His smile is unexpectedly wry before he turns away.

Natasha feels lighter as Steve leaves. He strides to the door like the soldier he is, not fatigued at all; she envies that. She lets herself linger in the silent room, back flat to the mat. She doesn’t sleep, and doesn’t feel like she could.

The door opens again before half an hour’s gone by. Footsteps approach her, a heavy familiar tread that’s sent terror crawling up her throat for decades. There are so many ways this might go, and she doesn’t want to open her eyes and see what version of James Barnes she’ll be facing in this moment.

_ I do not go gentle _ , she thinks, and opens her eyes.


	16. Chapter 16

** Russia **

** 1941 **

 

The small apartment is too warm, the heat of the day seeping in through open windows until Natasha wants to curl up and sleep like a cat. But she resists the urge, forces herself to move, to clean, to cook, until the sun is barely a glimmer over the horizon.

Then she sighs, and locks the door, and eats dinner alone. She tries to picture Alexei across from her, smiling and gesturing, telling some wild story or flirting with her in the most ridiculous ways. Every time she tries her mind skitters sideways. Gesturing hands become bloody stumps and sweet words become horrified screams. If anyone had been there to see her, they wouldn’t have noticed what was happening in her mind. She kept her expression serene without effort, and finished her portion of dinner before wrapping Alexei’s plate and setting it on the stove. 

She sits in an armchair and reads. At nine -- she needs no clock to tell her the time -- she sets it aside and stands, pulling the chair to the edge of the room to clear a space.

_ A lady should always be composed _ _._ Irina Petrovna’s voice rings in her mind as if it she were in the room. Nat lifts her arms and rises to her toes.  _ A lady is always prepared _ _._ She drops down and arcs her leg in a smooth kick that would strike an average man in the throat.

On and on, through every maneuver the same as she does every night, hearing whispers in her ear in an empty room. At the end of two hours she returns the chair to its place, heartbeat barely raised,and only the faintest sheen on her skin.  _ A lady does not betray her feelings. _

She gets into bed after one last check of the rooms, curled up on her side and falling into a light sleep almost instantly. She wakes not an hour later to the sight of stars glinting cold through the rippled glass of the bedroom window.  _ Alexei _ , she thinks for the space of a heartbeat, a sleepy smile curving her lips. Then a shadow falls across her and she rolls from the bed, kicking out as she moves and reaching under the bed as she rolls off it. She bounces rapidly to her feet, training the pistol on the hulking shadow across the bed. 

“Who are you?” She snarls the words, voice low. She can hear movement from the other room; three people at least, two of them men. She narrowed her eyes, gesturing with the gun. “Speak!”

“Such a demanding little princess, just like you always were, like a little Romanova. Tch. Come with us, now. You have a destiny to fulfill, Alianova.” 

She fights -- of course she fights -- and takes two of them down broken or bleeding, but there are too many of them, she is out of practice, her body has changed since her last combat. She is not good enough.

She wakes to a pounding headache and a strange, antiseptic smell. Her wrists are chained behind her, and when she tugs she can feel the short lead bolted in two places into a smooth and slightly curving wall. Her head is covered in rough, foul-smelling fabric, and she hears noises from outside the room but she can’t tell what any of them are through the residual haze of the drugs. There are at least two other people with her, or perhaps three; it’s difficult to tell. Time passes strangely as she waits, periodically testing the strength of her bonds though she already knows them to be beyond her power. A metal door opens now and again, followed by heavy footsteps and the clanking of more metal. The sound of someone stirring, groans and faint protests, each new voice feminine. The footsteps, when they leave, are lighter.

It happens six times, and on the sixth the cover is pulled from her head, not that she can see much in the utter darkness. Not until the door opens a seventh time. 

She blinks against the shock of light, peering as a silhouetted figure steps into the open doorway. 

“My dears,” Irina Petrovna says. “I’m so glad to see you once again.”

_ No _ _,_ Natasha screams, but she doesn’t, can’t, her throat closes around the word and all that escapes is a strangled, helpless noise. Similar sentiments echo in the small, round chamber.

“As I’m sure you have come to realize,” she continues, as if they were watching with rapt attention, “the project has been renewed. This has been in progress for some time. Confirmation was received only last week, and now… well, now you are all here.”

“Tell us the truth,” someone growls. Natasha squints but cannot see who. The voice both familiar and not. “You always go ‘round and ‘round like we don’t see the feathers in your mouth. I’m tired, and I want my child. Speak plainly.”

“You were prepared as children to serve your country. You are weapons, primed for use. The time has come for you to do as you were trained.”

Nobody asks what will happen if they refuse. 

“It has been, of course, many years. You may have forgotten some of your training. Some of you may have forgotten it all. Today we will help you to… remember what you are.”

Lights clicked on, one by one, around the room. They were dim, but the sudden change left Natasha and every other girl flinching back and blinking rapidly until their sight cleared. When Natasha could see, she turned her attention back to the woman in the center of the room. The sweet round face and pale eyes had changed no more in the two years since the program crumbled than they had in the previous ten.

As ten girls watched, Irina Petrovna raised her arm. “Only five of you may move on to the final stage of our wonderful project. Though I would like to see you all in the role you’ve trained most of your lives for, our resources are limited.” She opens her hand, and five small strips of fabric flutter to the ground, as red as fresh blood. 

“I will return in one hour,” she continues, spinning neatly on her heel and striding back to the door. “The five girls with scarves around their necks will move on. And,” she continues, pausing at the threshold. “I should mention, it is not only your own lives you fight for. Do you wish to see that child again, Sofia? Pray that you are strong enough to remain with the program, or this will be the last year she sees.”

The door shuts behind her, the  _ click click click _ of locks sliding into place echoing in the room. A moment later, Natasha’s shackles release, and she wrenches her arms forward immediately, almost whimpering with the relief, until she glances up at the young women around her.

For a long moment the chamber is nearly silent. What goes through the minds of the other girls is beyond Natasha; her own is full of thoughts slipping quickly by before she can grasp them, a strange mix of calculation and exhaustion. Not physical; whatever she was drugged with has faded quickly from her system. She’s merely tired of another game, another test.

She thinks of Alexei’s face, of the sweet, excited way he would have smiled when she told him her news. And then another face flutters up from the depths of her mind, a dark-haired boy she hasn’t thought of in years. Surely a strong young man now, a blacksmith in a faraway town. Her heart twists, and she moves, lunging for the scraps of fabric. 

The voice in her thoughts this time does not belong to Irina Petrovna; this voice reminds her in broken Russian when to duck, when to turn, when to lash out.  _ Only a fool _ _,_ it says,  _ fights her enemy’s strength _ _._ The sounds of combat surround her as she moves, snatching red silk from the ground without stopping until she rebounds from the wall opposite. She collides with another girl as she does, the floor smoother than she expects. The girl turns, snarling, only to hesitate with wide eyes as she sees Natasha’s face.

“Nastasya,” she breathes, and a smile touches the corners of her lips, as though she has found an ally.

Natasha slams her head forward and Anya drops to the ground with a scream and a broken nose. The noise is loud in the small space, and another girl breaks free from her opponent with a vicious kick. Her hand is empty, and her face determined as she turns towards Natasha, stalking forward like a starving wolf. Natasha glances at the scarf in her hand, at the girl approaching her, and offers a smile before tossing it in the air.

The girl lunges for it, and Natasha darts beneath her.

The rest of the fight is chaotic. Her senses tell her it’s brief, but it seems to go on forever. Natasha keeps out of it, slippery as an eel, taking only glancing blows. She has no scarf; she’s not a target.

The end is abrupt. A dark-haired girl -- Olya, she thinks -- trips, and another girl is instantly atop her, mercilessly beating her head against the ground until her hand falls open and the scarf snatched from it. Another girl is strangled by her own shirt. Natasha keeps moving until the others stop.

“Five scarves, Natalya.” The voice is right behind her, the same rasping tone that first spoke. She turns, shivers as she sees the bright red braid and dark blue eyes, shadowed by the bruise rapidly forming along the side of her face.

“Are we not friends, Sofia?” she responds, flattening her back against the wall and panting between words. “When have I been anything but Natasha to you?”

“When they dragged us back here. When they said I’d not see my daughter again.” 

From the corner of her eye, Natasha can see three other girls approaching. A fifth, still breathing-- barely-- is curled on the floor across from her. Her eyes drop to the strip of red wound around Sofia’s fingers.

She makes a choice. Her body moves before the thought is done, turning sideways and driving into the other girl. She has speed on her, if not strength; and Natasha is not battered. Moving behind Sofia as the girl falls to her knees is simple. Hooking a hand underneath her chin, another laid across her forehead: simple.

For a moment, time seems to stop, and Natasha closes her eyes against a pinprick sensation. Then she jerks her arms to the side and snatches the fabric from Sofia’s limp hand as she falls.

The other girls pause, glancing between each other. She can see them consider, count. Five girls breathing. 

She will not think of the daughter that Sofia loved. She will never allow herself to think of that child. To wonder if Sofia named her Lilia, as she once whispered of in the dead of night. In a time when they were allowed to dream.

Wordlessly, the girls disperse. When the doors open again, perhaps half an hour later, the dead are laid against one section of wall and the living are sprawled along the other. Natasha doesn’t bother to look up when someone pulls her to her feet and guides her from the room. They’re taken down long corridors to another room reeking of antiseptic, where their wounds are cleaned and bandaged. Natasha keeps her eyes trained on the floor, feeling... nothing. Tired. Someone cleans and binds a long, deep scratch on her arm she hadn’t even noticed getting, and Natasha finds herself drifting as the adrenaline fades.

Until the door opens, and Irina Petrovna steps through, and Natasha can only think  _ of course _ . 

“I’m very proud of you all,” she says. “You’ve exceeded expectations. Indeed, I didn’t expect that you would _kill_ \-- but you all acted quickly, forcefully. Not an ounce of training wasted, yes?”

Someone makes a noise halfway between gagging and sobbing. Natasha sighs, letting her eyes drift closed again. There will be a point, eventually.

It comes quicker than she expects. 

“Dr. Erskine will speak with each of you now,” Irina Petrovana breathes the name with something akin to reverence, “and will choose one girl, and one only, to undergo-- a trial, so to speak. And if all goes well, my dears, one of you will be at the vanguard of a new kind of war.”

Irina Petrovna pauses, as if waiting for a response. When the room remains silent but for the efforts of the medics, she speaks again.

“I’m so proud of all of you, truly. You have kept alive an ideal that I have worked very hard to see realized. This project would be nothing without you. Keep that in mind.”

_ You are made of death and I hate you down to your soul _ , Natasha thinks, but she won’t open her mouth, not surrounded like this. She settles for glaring at Irina’s back as the woman leaves. 

Natasha is the last to be interviewed. Each girl is led wordlessly from the small medical room in turn, leaving the rest to shift restlessly in-- Natasha can’t think of it as anticipation, none of them are looking  _ forward _ to any of this, but a nervous sort of excitement still crackles through the room.

When Natasha’s turn comes, she’s led through winding corridors to an even smaller room. It’s empty but for a desk and two chairs, and a man sitting in one of them. He seems nervous, shifting on the edge of his seat, and Natasha automatically offers a reassuring smile even as she assesses him. Late-forties, perhaps, and no more than a few inches taller than Natasha herself. The smile he gives in return to hers is genuine, if faintly tremulous, and he rises to pull out the other chair for her as soon as she steps into the room. Natasha gives him a grateful nod as she sits, no artifice required.

“My dear, you look-- well. No worse for wear than the others, I suppose. I’ve been told what occurred, and for what it’s worth… I am sorry.” A German accent coats his Russian, but he speaks well enough. She blinks, a tiny tendril of surprise winding through her thoughts.  _ Sorry _ ?  That she had to kill to prove herself among the best? She studies him more closely, seeing something in his face that she has not seen in so long it takes her a while to name the emotion.

Sympathy. Real, not feigned. 

“Thank you,” Natasha says stiffly after a moment, feeling that his remark should at least be acknowledged. 

Erskine seems surprised by that. Leans back in his chair and rubs his thumb over his lips before offering her a small smile. “So. At least one of you has not had the distaste for senseless waste programmed out of her entirely.”

_ Senseless waste _ _,_ Natasha thinks,  _ this… this is a man who understands. Why create all these perfect weapons, only to have them destroy each other? _

She inclines her head carefully, aware that she must still be careful of her words. Their conversation is undoubtedly being monitored. “To throw away excellent weapons in a ceaseless search for one that is perfect is… inefficient. Everything has a use. It is, as you say, wasteful.”

Erskine nods, very slowly. Natasha wonders if she’s said too much. If she has shown herself in a poor light, criticizing the decisions of those above her. 

"I think I have heard enough." He reaches across the desk, clasping one of her hands in both of his own.

It takes a moment for Natasha to understand his meaning. “...me,” she breathes, “you’re choosing me?”

“You are the best. I wonder what it will make of you-- but you are… yes. Come.” He releases her hand and rises from his chair with a weary smile, gesturing to the door. Natasha moves more slowly. 

A soldier escorts her away from Dr. Erskine almost immediately, with muttered words about preparing for the experiment -- they mean to do it tonight, and she can’t help but wonder why such haste is necessary. Nor does she believe the man that guides her with a firm grip on her elbow, who won’t answer her questions and avoids her eyes.

She’s not surprised when she’s taken to a well-appointed sitting room.

“Have a seat, child.” Irina Petrovna murmurs. At her gesture, a woman steps up beside her and pours two cups of tea. Natasha sits gingerly on the edge of the chair across the table, every inch of her body screaming to run. “You know, I always thought… well, we couldn’t know, could we, when you were all so young? But I noticed you, you who used to be Natalia Alianovna Yurievna. I am not surprised that you sit before me now.”

Natasha picks up the steaming cup of tea, eyes on the table as the bitter taste slips across her tongue. “You can’t have meant for this,” she finally says. “Not at the beginning. This is new.”

“Tch. Perceptive girl. We trained you to be, I suppose. Yes, this is new. What of it? A door closed, and I infiltrated every other one I saw until at last one opened to an opportunity. Dr. Erskine and his miraculous concoction. If all goes well, perhaps you will be only the first.”

There is a knock on the door, a rhythm, a code that Natasha cannot decipher. A look colder than death comes over the woman’s face, and she regards Natasha with predatory eyes. “There is one final matter you must attend to. One final… end, we need to tie off.”

The door opens, and as Irina Petrovna exits, another woman enters. Natasha is certain she loses consciousness for a second -- the teacup falls to the floor.

“You abandoned me.”

“No,” Natasha whispers. She forces herself to look at Vika’s face despite the way her stomach turns, forces herself to trace the lines of scars, the bruises, the way the sweetness and softness has leached from every line of her body. “I saved you. They were going to kill you…”

Vika stumbles backwards, slapping away Natasha’s instinctive reach to help, and rips her dress from her body with shaking hands. “You see this? You think death would be worse? Do you know what they did, Natalya?”

Natasha can’t help turning her face away. 

“I was a toy, and a slave. That was what you bought me, Natalya, with your heroics. You  _ saved _ me, saved me from the cold, saved me from a gun, only so they could burn out my soul.”

“I thought--” Natasha swallows against the tightness in her throat, shaking her head. Her back strikes the cool metal of the door. She can’t remember backing up. “I’m sorry, Vika. I’m so sorry. I don’t- I-”

“No. You have no right to call me that. You are not my friend, you are a traitor, a monster. I  _ hate _ you. You killed Katya and Masha-- this is all your fault. All of it.”

A soft scrape draws her attention, followed by the familiar click of a pistol being cocked. Her eyes snap back to Vika and she draws a shuddering breath. Vika aims the gun at Natasha’s torso, chin tipped up in determination. Her tattered dress hangs from her shoulders and Natasha cannot guess the emotion on that ruined face.

“No,” Natasha whispers again.

“Monsters deserve to die.”

Natasha moves before she thinks, diving away from the door into a roll that brings her standing beside Vika, hands outstretched for the weapon. 

* * *

When she’s taken from the room she’s a trembling, bloody mess. Vika’s body is in the corner, covered as best she could by the remains of the dress.

Natasha is marched through endless halls and pushed into a tiled room where hot water beats against her flesh and someone scrubs her clean. She doesn’t bother to look at them, instead watching the red swirl down her skin and into the drain, paler and paler as it goes.

She tries not to close her eyes, terrified of the accusing faces behind them.

She thinks perhaps Erskine will speak to her again, but she’s given only undergarments and pushed immediately along to a large room with what looks like a padded chair at the center. She doesn’t resist as she’s directed to the chair and strapped down, opens her mouth for the rubber piece  placed in it, and waits in stillness while needles and sensors are attached to her in many places.

She’s left alone for a moment, then, and she stares blankly at the gray ceiling until softly squeaking wheels draw her attention. She’s too bound up to be able to turn her head and look, but the half-formed question of  _ what _ is quickly answered as massive machinery is moved into place above and around her. It seems to take an eternity as it’s latched together.

“ _ Ready _ ?” someone asks, the sound distant and muffled. Natasha doesn’t know how she’s meant to answer. Perhaps she’s to knock on the metal, or--

Pain, instant, unending, unbearable. She arches, she screams. The bindings hold her close to the chair. Everything is burning, burning, burning, from her skin to her very soul, and then it cools, a split-second’s balm before it turns freezing like a snowbound mountain, so cold her teeth ache. And it goes on, and on, and on.

When they pull the machine away, much later, the straps on her limbs are broken. She pulls the needles from her skin and stands, glancing curiously around the room.

She can feel every molecule of air against her skin. She is remade, reborn. 

She is a weapon.


	17. Chapter 17

“Natalya.” Barnes’s boots shuffle on the mat for a moment, before he drops to it with a soft  _ thump _ . His posture is not actively threatening, which is… promising. Probably.

“ _ There are cameras here, Soldier, ”  _ she murmurs in Russian. “ _ Not the best place to kill me." _

He breathes in sharply, the a faint sound of denial seeming to stick in his throat. " _You know that I could easily disable the cameras, Natalya-"_ he says, finally. “I'm... not here for that.”

His hair is loose, casting his eyes in shadow. His posture is strange, giving off conflicting cues; fear and anger and apology and a hundred other things. He can probably hear her heart, thundering like wild horses in her chest. 

"I hated you." It's barely a whisper, as if it were a true admission. 

"I know," she replies.

"You don't. Even when I didn't remember, I- I did. I remembered  you , every time I saw you. I could have killed you, Natalya, so many times."

"You almost did."

He snorts, loud and abrupt. "I could have shot you in the head. I could have killed the target without even grazing you. I... I think I wanted you to suffer."

"I was already suffering!" Nat closes her eyes again, shivering, before she forces herself to sit up. She mimics his posture, sloppily cross-legged. "I thought it was just your body. That they'd scraped you out and poured the Soldier in. I meant to put you down."

"It would have been a kindness."

"...I know. But you were better, so much better; I never stood a chance.  _ That's _ when you almost killed me; do you remember it?

He makes a strangled noise, shaking his head. "They wiped a lot, when you left..." He laughs, soft and bitter. "Better, though, Natalya? Yeah. I'm the better killing machine. Great."

"We're all weapons, Barnes." Nat rolls her shoulders, not quite a shrug. He opens his mouth, then pauses, before turning away. The muscles around his eyes are tight.

"You called me Bucky, once,” he says, voice low.

"I called you James.” It comes out harsher than she intends, and he hunches over just a little more. She feels…  _ something _ , though she can’t put a name to it. Regret, perhaps.

Silences stretches between them. Five minutes, ten. Natasha considers all the ways she might kill him, or he her, in this room. She considers leaving, and wonders whether there might be any way to make time move faster. Her skin itches with idleness.

When he speaks again, his voice is thick with something like pain. “I am very broken, Natalia Yurievna.”

Lies crawl up her throat, and she clenches her teeth against them. She is tired, tired,  _ tired _ of lies, of the bitter taste they leave in her mouth. “You weren’t whole  _ then _ , either,” she says instead, which is some kind of truth. He’s silent for another long moment, and if were anyone but Barnes she might have wondered if she hadn’t been heard.

“Maybe. Maybe I could’ve been, if things had been different. Maybe we could’ve had something.”

“We did have something.” She blinks away a sudden image of laughing soldiers and free-flowing whiskey.

“More than that. I wanted more. You wanted it, too.”

“No.” She barely breathes the word.

“I think you’re lyin’,” he finally replies, cutting her a glance. “You were always good at that.”

Frustration burns through her. “Believe what you like. I don't need you to trust me.”

“No?” He reaches for her with his flesh hand, catching her wrist in a tight grip. “ _ I _ need to trust you. Far as not stickin’ a knife in my back, at least.”

“I-” She assesses quickly. Short of breaking her wrist, she won’t be able to get loose. Not ideal. Her heart trips in her chest. She swallows, licks her lips. “I hardly ever use knives, these days.”

“Ain’t a fuckin’ joke.” He takes a deep breath, leans closer, catching her gaze. His eyes are dark, and for once entirely present and focused. “Tell me you didn’t know about the train.”

She blinks. It wasn’t what she expected. And yet-- of course. It’s always been the question. “I knew,” she says carefully, “where it was coming from. Where it was going. I didn’t know what would happen on it.” She shrugs. “You wanted Zola.”

“If I ever find out that’s a lie, I will kill you.” There’s no anger in his voice, no threat. He’s stating a fact. 

“And I’m supposed to trust that you won’t put a bullet in my head  _ without _ that provocation?” She glances meaningfully at his grip on her wrist.

His laugh is a sharp, humourless bark. “Don't. I don't know if all that bullshit's out of my head. If it'll ever be.”

“So where does that leave us?” She tugs her hand away and he lets it go, watching as she rises smoothly to her feet and steps away, putting space between them. “What’s left?”

“Destroy Hydra.” He shrugs. In his other arm the gears whir softly. “A common enemy.”

“And after?”

He gets to his feet, then, movements sharp and efficient. “Is there ever an after? Cut off one head. We’ll be at this a long time, Natalya.”

She can’t find the words to respond to him. It’s no less than the truth.

* * *

“Twenty minutes out,” Stark calls back from the cockpit. Natasha stretches as Steve calls back an acknowledgement. She’s usually calm before a mission starts, relaxed, but this… this is too personal. It itches up her spine, makes her frustrated and restless.

“ _ Breathe, Nat. I can hear you worrying from over here _ _._ ” Clint’s voice is clear over her earpiece, despite the several miles that separate the two planes. 

“I’m not worrying,” she denies automatically, tasting bitterness on her tongue. “I’m anticipating.”

“ _ Sure _ _,”_ comes Clint’s half-laughing reply.  “ _ That’s what we’ll call it.” _

The light, familiar banter brings a soft smile to her lips, like Clint had surely intended. She checks her gear again, letting the familiar actions soothe her further.

When she looks back up, Barnes is staring at her, a strange mix of expressions playing across his face. The wariness she has rapidly become accustomed to, and the blank calmness of a weapon pointed at a target; those she expects, but there’s a touch of a smile about his lips, a softly fond look in his eyes. She can practically see the memories in them, and her breath hitches, just a little. 

Steve leans forward into her vision, and she turns her focus to him, grateful for this distraction.

“Alright, let’s go over this again.” He nods at her, his gaze devoid of the suspicion that had lain thick between them these past few days. Something inside her eases, just a little. “Stark and Thor will go in the front and make a lot of noise. Nat, Bucky, you’ll be going in from the roof. I’ll sweep around back and make sure we’ve got full containment. Barton keeps the medical team safe while we get the girls out, then we move on to the next site.”

“Pretty sure we’ve gone over this several times,” Tony mutters. “Anyone ever tell you repetition is boring?”

Steve presses his lips together to hide a smile. “Remember, we want to hit their communications as fast as we can. The sooner we’ve got that down, the more lead time we’ve got for the next site.”

“ _ I would like to once again protest my assignment. It’s boring and I want to shoot stuff and I’m probably not the best first face for a bunch of traumatized and/or sedated kids to see.” _

“You’re good with kids,” Natasha drawls.

“ _ My ability to bond with small children over ice cream and dogs is not really applicable here, Nat. ” _

“Everybody plays their part, Barton,” Steve says. “That’s the point of a team.”

_ A team _ _._ Hot, unexpected tears prick at the back of Natasha’s eyes. She tries to shove them away, down into that little box in her heart, but it seems the lid is cracked, and the trick no longer works.  _ A team _ , he says, and for some reason she hears  _ a family _ .

She has a family. Broken in so many places, her most of all, but... something she chose. And something she can continue to choose, if she wants it.

The moment she thinks it, she has to lock her jaw against -- something. A sob, a scream, a laugh, she doesn’t know. A part of her mind screams at her to  _ run _ . Run again, a new face, a new name, a new purpose. It would hardly be the first time. But something below that is calm, curled into the warmth of the idea like a purring cat. 

She chooses.


End file.
